The Conversion Scientist™

Science by Email

The Magic Email for Freelancers and Job Seekers

July 10, 2009 on 11:14 am | In Audio Available, Email Marketing | No Comments

It’s 130 words long, and can build your practice or get you more interviews

Email is the biggest social network on the planet. Even 80-year-olds have been on email long before giving Facebook a try. Because of this, it is the most effective tool for building a network that will connect you with the people that can give you work — whether you are a freelancer or a job seeker.

The problem is that email is a very personal medium. If we send unsolicited email, we feel we’re invading someone’s personal space. After all, we’ve all had spammers invade our space.

The Magic Email

The Magic Email gives you polite, respectful access to your email network. It contains the following components:

• It is specific about it’s purpose: to get permission to contact someone by email
• It states exactly what the recipient can expect from future emails
• It states specifically how the recipient can help
• It offers to reciprocate, making you a resource for them
• It tells the recipient how to remove themselves from your list

As a bonus, it should offer something of value; a link to something of broad interest.

The Magic Email creates an email network that has given you permission to contact them. It is through these contacts that you will win more freelance opportunities, and have your resume and cover letter delivered directly to hiring managers.

The Details of the Strategy

If you want to turn email into a work-generating network, listen to my presentation at Freelance Austin. Furthermore, Austin-based CardboardResume.com™ has sponsored a free copy of my book The Market for Me: Surviving Job Loss and Building Your Lifetime Career Network.

 

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The Job Song courtesy of Industrial Jazz Group via Music Alley.

Science by Email

Six E-mail Mistakes that Bassett Furniture Used to Piss Me Off

December 2, 2008 on 9:55 am | In Email Marketing | 4 Comments

Are Bassett’s products as bad as their e-mail?

I’ve gotten three e-mails from Bassett Furniture this week. I did not opt-in for this communication. And, to top it off, the e-mail address they sent to is used in one place: my kids’ elementary school. It’s the address I expect to get information from my kids’ school. This sort of thing disgusts me enough to blog about it.

Will you vote for this on Digg and Sphinn? They need to get the message. You can do so at the bottom of this post by clicking on “Share.”

We Know How this Happened

This is probably more common in the tough market that retailers are currently facing. Some executive says, “We’ve got to get more sales. Use e-mail.” The underlings say, “But, we don’t have a database of e-mails because you didn’t approve that program last year.”

The execs don’t want to hear it. They’ve got a bonus to worry about. So, the underlings go out and buy a list from a list broker. This list was probably presented to them as a list of opt-in email addresses. List providers lie knowing that they can always hide behind the “we were told it was opt-in” excuse.

Bassett, this is not an opt-in list. It was scrapped from an elementary school Web site in Round Rock, Texas. You may get away with infringing on my privacy, but stay away from my kids.

Dear Bassett, in a down market, take market share away from your competitors, don’t give it away.

Poorly Executed to Boot

Once they’d found the list, the Bassett underlings asked, “what do we send?” Well, they didn’t spend much time on that question. They essentially scanned a print flyer and sent it on as one big image.

No introductory text

On my smart phone and in my email client, all you see is an email from Bassett Furniture and a URL.

This is what the email looks like in my e-mail preview pane.

With images turned off in my client, I got a big blank page. That’s their value proposition. “Big blank desperate spammer.”

There is no setup text to tell me why I would open it. Of course, I opened it because the address was scraped from the Web site of the school my elementary age kids attend.

No Value Proposition

Actually, “We’re Desperate” wouldn’t have been a bad value proposition. I would have responded to:

“We’re overstocked on the kind of furniture you’ve been wanting for your home, and we’re discounting to move it.”

No compelling call to action

If you allow your e-mail client to download the big stupid image, it says “Buy Online” at the top and bottom, and tells you when their sale ends. Most of the center is taken up with nine images of beds, tables and sofas with discounted prices. The never ask me to “Learn more” or “See more pictures.”

Not written in English

At the bottom of the page, below the big blank space you’ll find this lame — so lame — call to action: “Contact You Local Store for Details and other Special Offers. [sic]”

It makes you wonder what language this was translated from. “All your base are belong to us.”

The store finder is a nice feature and other retailers should steal this one shining feature of the site. Of course, Bassett fumbled the most important aspect of this effort: getting people to buy what they advertise.

Bad landing page

Given my horrid impression of Bassett from their e-mail, could they save themselves with an online experience that rocks? Nope.

The big graphic is a big link. No surprise. The page it takes me to has non of the products advertised in the email. In fact, it picks something at random  from their “CLEARANCE” tab. The featured item changes with each click.

So, the trail to a discounted item is lost within the first click, and I’m outta there.

The lawyers were consulted

To their credit, they did consult the lawyers. Their spam-mail is CAN SPAM compliant, with opt-out and mailing address.

What you should learn from this

1. Don’t buy lists. It’s too easy to generate your own, pure, powerful opt-in house list from your own Web site. You just have to be willing to put in the time.

2. Before you send an e-mail with a big image, consider plain text. It works better on phones and in e-mail clients where images are turned off (>50% by most accounts).

3. Give me a reason to open and read. Each email has a value proposition that is part of your business’s value proposition. State it. Clearly.

4. Take me to a page that has what you offer in your email. Whether it’s information or products, I have to see the same picture or the same text on the landing page. Never take me to your home page. Please.

5. Have someone review your copy, someone who knows English.

6. Follow the CAN SPAM rules. It’s the only reason I can’t report these idiots.

I’m not going to go into their subject line and From: address. It’s amazing that they even thought to include these.

I suspect Bassett’s marketing underlings will be fired for poor performance this Holiday Season. Maybe this post will save them.

For more rants and helpful tips on e-mail marketing, subscribe to The Conversion Scientist blog.

Science by Email

The Superstitions That Keep You From E-mail Success

November 24, 2008 on 8:57 pm | In Audio Available, Email Marketing, Methodical | 2 Comments

In my somewhat facetious post about The Father of E-mail, I make the statement:

If you’re considering investing in a social marketing campaign, and you haven’t nailed your e-mail strategy, you may be investing in the wrong place.

I don’t think business owners and marketers are dumb. I think that they’re just superstitious. Like walking under a ladder, they fear that if they really step up their e-mail strategy, they’ll come to some sad end with only the pity of their loved ones to show for it. Often, they’re afraid they’ll be punished by the god of “corporate image” and the unforgiving taskmaster, “brand.”

Here are the superstitions that keep us from making e-mail the effective, inexpensive marketing tool that it should be.

If I send e-mail, I’ll be seen as a Spammer

So, what is SPAM? It’s unsolicited or irrelevant e-mail. Technically, irrelevant e-mail isn’t SPAM, but the reaction is the same, and usually involves words that I won’t publish here.

So, what isn’t SPAM?

• It’s e-mail that I’ve specifically asked for.
• It’s e-mail that I anticipate getting, even if I don’t read it all.
• It’s e-mail that let’s me opt-out any time I feel it’s not relevant.
• It’s information delivered to me in the way I want it if my inbox is my primary information source.

If you can satisfy these requirements, you are providing a valuable service. In fact, if you don’t send e-mail to someone who has opted into your newsletter or notification program, you’re breaking a contract with your prospects and customers. It’s dishonest to offer something and not follow through.

People get too much e-mail

No. People get too much unimportant e-mail. If you send valuable information to people who need it, you too can be important. You may not be “I read every one of your e-mails immediately” important, but you can be.

Don’t worry. If their needs change, if they lose interest, they’ll tell you by unsubscribing (since you make this so easy).

People don’t want e-mail

If not by e-mail, then how will your prospects learn to solve their problems? Do you think more of your prospects are reading blogs? Do you think more of your prospects are on social networks? Twitter?

That people are using social media to get their information is only true for very specific segments of our the population. Members of the Baby Boomer generation and Generation X love their inboxes. Millennials do to, they just won’t admit it.

Let your readers decide. If you don’t have a plan for helpful, engaging e-mail, you’re denying them one of their favorite avenues of communication.

E-mail is old technology

E-mail is in its infancy. It is not a mature medium destined to fade away soon at the feet of a social media god. We are just learning how to deliver effective communications via the inbox. New technologies are being brought to bear, enabling inbox jockeys to get only the e-mail that is important, urgent, or highly desirable.

You just have to be sure you’re delivering something that is important, urgent, or highly desirable.

It takes too much time to do a newsletter

Then don’t do a newsletter.

If you can write a blog, you can write an engaging e-mail. In fact, if you have a blog, services such as Feedburner and Feedblitz will automatically send an e-mail to your subscribers every time you post. With Feedblitz, for example, you can create a template that includes promotional offers that will go out with your blog-to-e-mail posts.

My boss is more interested in social marketing and video

E-mail has an amazing quality that so many social media don’t. It’s measurable. You know who opened, who read, who bounced, who clicked, what they clicked on and if they forwarded the e-mail to a friend.

Plus, if you believe my premise that e-mail is the largest social network on the planet, you know that there is no better way to expose your video and social properties than through a list of interested individuals who’ve said they want to receive it.

No social network grows without e-mail. Why would your offering spread without it?

The “I’m No SPAMmer” Recipe

Since it’s easy to send e-mail without being a SPAMmer, why not do the following things:

• Add a way to subscribe to your helpful or entertaining e-mail communications on every page of your Web site. Add a checkbox to every form. If you want to be extra diligent, ask the recipient to verify their e-mail address before they’ll receive anything.
• Take the time to generate content that is going to help your readers solve their problems, educate them, or entertain them. Write as a human to a human. You do it everyday when communicating with your colleagues. Worry less about the design and more about your reader.
• Be sure to offer an unsubscribe with each e-mail. Be CAN SPAM compliant by putting your mailing address on the e-mail. Don’t send e-mail to people who unsubscribe.
• Send as often as the quality of your content allows. I received five e-mails in one day from American Airlines. They were telling me about the status of the flights I was scheduled to board. This wasn’t too much. It was welcome. Certainly there’s something valuable enough to send once or twice a month.

Most of this functionality will be provided by any of a hundred E-mail Service Providers (ESPs) for about a penny an e-mail. Plus, they’ll manage your relationship with Internet Service Providers to ensure that more of your e-mail makes it to the inboxes it’s destined for.

We’re talking about all things related to online marketing strategy and conversion at The Conversion Scientist. Get every post directly to your inbox and you won’t miss a thing.

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