Are we communicating?
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Email fatigue, email overload, email blocking, spam, regulation, certification, customization, personalization, monetization, opt-in, opt-out, shake it all about. It sure is a troubled and complex email world out there.
Maybe you feel like you're out of breath just trying to keep up with new trends and influences affecting your email publishing success?
Frankly, I don't have the time to keep up with developments; there are just too many new things going on. But the good news is that I don't have to. And nor do you.
You see, at the core of email publishing is the idea of communicating with a reader. That's basically all you're doing. Now, there may be hundreds of different reasons why you're doing this, and hundreds of different ways of going about it. But, fundamentally, you're involved in a very simple human activity.
You're communicating.
Just about every non-technical problem, challenge or change I've ever encountered in email publishing and marketing has been effectively managed by remembering this. By going back to the basics of human relationships and communication.
When you sit down to write your newsletter, you're writing to an individual. You may well have a thousand subscribers, or even a million subscribers (lucky you!). But when each one gets your email, they're sitting alone, looking at a screen, within their own little bit of private space.
And that's why bulk email, corporate communications, and similar don't really work. They've missed the point.
I don't want to hear from your marketing department. And I don't want to be "marketed at", either. Oh I may buy the odd product or service based on what you send me, but you've not got what really matters - my mind and my attention.
Why should I listen to you if you don't even recognize my existence as an individual? Why should I listen to you when all you want is something from me?
I didn't sign up for your newsletter to do you a favor. I did it for me - because I want something out of this relationship, too.
Once you begin to consider this perspective - the point of view of the recipient - instead of obsessing about publisher concerns, getting through to your subscribers is easy.
Once you understand that it's about a two-way exchange of value - you have to give if you want to take - then email publishing success becomes a whole lot simpler.
So what are the keys to gaining and retaining the attention and patronage of your readership? How do you stay out of that delete folder? How do you keep your readers' fingers off the unsubscribe button?
Give them what they want. Yep, it really is that simple.
For starters, it doesn't matter how many funky graphics or scripts or gimmicks or whatever you use, people want good content.
They want content that is useful or entertaining, relevant, timely, and unique to your publication. Unique in substance or unique in presentation and character, if you can't find your own content niche.
Then they want professionalism. They want reliability and ease-of-use. They want requests to be honored and feedback to be answered.
And they want some kind of connection to the publication. An editorial, a newsletter personality, something, anything that addresses them at a personal, human level. Not some drab jargon-ridden blurb that has "gimme" (and "delete me") written all over it in big red letters.
If you want to build a solid, core, loyal, responsive, attentive, profitable subscriber base, deliver those three things.
So here's the test to see if I explained myself well enough. Not a day passes without someone, somewhere desperately seeking the answer to this question...
"How can I make sure my emails stand out from the crowd, when people are simply tuning out all bulk email?"
The answer? Don't publish bulk email, publish personal email sent in bulk.
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