The Rhythm Method Works for E-Mail

It is not unusual for your e-mail marketing strategy to be one of
the many details of launching an online presence relegated to
something that "we'll get to when we get everything else up and
running."

But I promise you that if you incorporate e-mail marketing from
your earliest strategy sessions, you will be rewarded many times
over. Like the exercise of writing a business plan, it helps you
focus on what you want and need to do to have a successful online
venture. A well-considered e-mail marketing strategy should be
deeply integrated into your website design, making it easy for
your visitors to subscribe while automating nearly everything to
help you manage your visitor information and begin the dialogue
with them.

Following are a few tips to get you started with a rhythm of your own:

1. Develop an editorial schedule. Relevant to what you are doing
and what you want to accomplish, your broadcast may be monthly,
weekly, bi-monthly. Prevailing market research tells us that
touching people at least once per month keeps your business in
mind. Build your schedule around the events that make sense for
your business or create events to give you a reason to contact
your readers.

2. Keep Your Design Consistent. Have a design for your e-mail
that is consistent from e-mail to e-mail. Of course, it can
evolve, but consistency of design helps to brand you -- in a good
way. Keep regular features in the same position from issue to
issue, including the special article front and center.

3. Give something of value in each issue. Don't be afraid to give
away information, special offers, and some pure fun, like a joke
or site of the month.

4. Be consistent in who is sending the e-mail. You want your
readers to immediately recognize that the e-mail is from you or
your company so they will open it and not delete it. If they know
your company name, use that along with the name of a real person.

5. Use a compelling subject line. This is where you will spend
the most time, depending on your business. There has been a
tremendous amount of research done to learn what makes readers
open and respond to e-mails. Of course, everyone's customers are
going to be different to some extent. However, it's been found
that people respond to something that has "real meaning" for
them. $10 off, Free Shipping, and Limited Time Offer are
extremely effective and compelling versus, say, 20% off. What
does 20% off mean? Oops! They're on to the next e-mail. Be sure
to clearly explain what your offer is in the body of your e-mail.
There's nothing worse than a potential customer who feels misled.

6. Take advantage of the click-through. Recent research from
MarketingSherpa shows that 39% of viewers accept offers on Thank
You pages. Where do people go now when they click on a link in
your e-mail or on your site? Are you taking advantage of this
upsell opportunity? What's most exciting about this statistic is
that it is consistent year-over-year, only dropping 1% in the
last 5 years.

7. Engage your readers in a conversation. "Markets are
conversations" is the first thesis of the Cluetrain Manifesto
(www.cluetrain.com), a seminal online marketing book that is
available free online.

8. Relax and have fun putting together your newsletters! That
comes through and makes your readers more receptive to whatever
it is you're offering. Having a strategy in place from the
beginning makes all this possible.

Getting the rhythm of putting out a regular newsletter is half
the battle. Try it. You'll find that the rhythm method actually
does work.