Avoiding The Junk Folder: How To Create a Winning Email Newsletter

Email marketing (or e-marketing) is one of the most effective ways to maintain a relationship with your customers. When they signed up for regular updates from you, it was the first sign that they were interested in buying something from your site again. So, don’t waste that energy by sending them emails they don’t want to read.

Here are my tips to make sure your marketing emails make the points you want to make, and quickly grab the attention of your customers. Don’t sit in junk mail; be a must-read publication!

 Think about your customers’ interests — and then be those interests

When you’re writing an email, put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Would you open an email that said “5% off your next cauliflower”?

Well, that depends, doesn’t it? On whether you’re really into cauliflowers?

Your marketing email list represents a diverse cross-section of individuals who are brought together by an appreciation of the products you sell or the services you provide.

Bearing that in mind, think about what it is you give to these people that they like. What is it about your brand, your products and your online persona that brings these people together? Once you’ve come up with your answer, all you have to do is give it to them!

 Get to the point!

Everyone knows email newsletters are selling something. The difference between an email newsletter that ticks a box, and a great newsletter your customers love to recieve, is the quality of the content inside.

You might not be surprised to know that people prefer receiving personalised emails — it makes them feel like you’re reaching out to them directly. But what also counts is relevancy, and getting to the point right away.

If you’ve got a great story to tell — perhaps you’ve got a brilliant review you want to share, or an upcoming special release — get to the point quickly and then elaborate later. In journalism, this is called the inverted pyramid, and it helps to make sure you’re hitting all your important information before you start noodling around with the extra fillings.

Come up with an incredible subject line

Your subject line is what sets you apart from junkmail. When your customer swipes open their emails on the morning commute and sees 17 unread emails since they left the house, which do you think they’re going to read?

●      The ones specifically relevant to their interests

●      The ones that sound important

●      The ones that seem like they’ll be a diversion

●      The ones that are impossible to ignore.

How can they tell which emails are going to fulfil at least one of those criteria? The all-important subject line. The urge to be cryptic and clever is strong, I know, but follow these rules and you’ll create a great subject line every time:

●      Use power words

●      Make promises (you can keep)

●      Be simple and effective

●      Use actionable words — in other words, use verbs rather than passive language

●      Tease and pique curiosity.

You might also want to try A-B testing with emails that have “sale!” or “special offer!” in the subject line, and those that don’t. Often these can be filtered into spam or junk folders by email clients. Give it a go and see what works for you.

Need some support with your email marketing? I can help. Send me a message today and let’s work together to boost your sales.

Until next time…

Christmas Emails and Blog Posts Your customers Will Actually Read

 ‘Tis the season for festive playlists and twinkly, warm-hearted marketing campaigns. Yes, it’s Christmas, and it’s time to push for your end of year sales targets. Jolly! If the idea of creating a Christmas campaign fills you with dread, don’t worry. I have some ideas for festive content that goes beyond announcing special offers.

Tell a Story

People love feeling warm and fuzzy at this time of year. Give your customers and clients an insight into your business that gets into the festive spirit!

Whether you tell the story of how your business’ started in the form of the 12 days of Christmas, or you share some stories about the good work you do within your community, the idea here is to keep things merry and bright.

Help Your Customers Find the Right Gifts

Christmas can be a stressful time as well as a happy one, so offering some help or guidance is one of the most useful things you can do. Creating emails or blog posts with thoughtful gift guides are always popular at this time of year, especially if you write them as listicles, or even create a video to sit alongside it.

Share Other Companies’ Great Content

It might sound counter-productive, but trust me. Christmastime is awash every year with amazing festive content, and even if you do your best to ignore it from a commercial point of view, your customers will be seeing it anyway. So why not get involved?

Make a list of your favourite Christmas adverts (I plan to next month!), or write a take-down of the worst or most tone-deaf of the year. Create a definitive guide of the best Christmas deals and sales of the season. Point your customers towards this years’ top toys, most popular gifts or must-have fashions.

But while you’re doing all this, remember to share your own great Christmas offers, deals and content!

Brace Yourself for Christmas Complaints

It happens. Christmas is the busiest time of year for retail businesses, but it’s also busy further down the supply chain too. Whether you’re a toy shop or a print business, it’s a time of pressure and deadlines that just get shorter and shorter.

So, be aware that while you’re under strain, so is everyone else. No matter how amazing your customer service is, you are going to get a couple of complaints through the net. Head off the festive grumbling with content that makes lodging a complaint easy and efficient, and even better, create a blog post or send an email out that helps your customers and clients get the best possible service even at your busiest times. Include things like:

●      Your busiest opening hours, so customers can plan their trip

●      Realistic delivery times during the Christmas period, to manage expectations

●      Advice on beating queues or avoiding delivery delays

●      Offers of bespoke or personalised help and support

●      Direct contact details

●      Tracking information — you could even write a blog post about how customers and clients can track their goods.

My advice here is: be honest, and be accountable. Make sure your social media managers are totally up-to-date with your complaints procedures, and give your whole team the same information you give to your customers to make sure you’re all on the same page.

Need some help with your content and marketing over the Christmas period? Let’s talk today about how I can support you with a short-term digital marketing solution.

The Instagram Algorithm: A Handy Guide

You must know by now that my marketing strategies are not about ‘gaming the system’ or ‘getting around’ updates or algorithms. I happen to think that most Google updates are for our own good — yes, really — and that the new Instagram algorithm, while tough to get used to, has its positives.

The thing is, you can’t beat these algorithms. When these changes are rolled out, there’s nothing you can do to stop them from affecting you. So you might as well join them.

Businesses on Instagram have been hit hard recently by changes the company has made to its algorithm. The timeline has been affected by algorithmic data for some years now, but rather than being solely affected by an individual account’s likes and activity, now it acts on other seemingly ethereal rules too.

It’s not actually as hard as it sounds. Here are my tips to help you update your content calendar and work with the algorithm so you can keep reaching your fans, followers and customers.

Post As Often As You Like

It’s debunking time: Instagram will not penalise you for posting more than once a day.

While your pics will be split up on the feed to avoid your followers being bombarded by your content while they scroll, you won’t have your pics or account ‘hidden’ or ‘shadowbanned’.

Remember that quality is more important than quantity. If you don’t have quality pics to share, less is more. But if you’ve got some great footage from an event, or a backlog of shots from a recent campaign, don’t feel like you have to hold back.

My Top Top: I’d say two or three posts in one day is more than enough. And don’t do this too often — think about how your followers would feel about being overwhelmed.

Take A Chance On Video

Okay, so Facebook’s ‘pivot to video’ thing was a scam, but it’s definitely true that some users enjoy watching videos on Instagram.

According to Hootsuite, Instagram says that they do not prioritise video on the timeline over other posts. However, if your users watch videos, they will see more video content. It’s always about what users want and what will ensure they stick around for longer.

My Top Tip: Give video a try, what have you got to lose? Keep a close eye on your analytics to see how your followers are receiving it. This will tell you in no uncertain terms whether or not your experiment was successful.

Be More People

What d’ya mean, be more people? Instagram no like people?

Honestly, Instagram is saying that their algorithm favours accounts who invest time in interaction.

In human terms, that means accounts who actively react and converse with their followers generally do better on the timeline than those who post and swerve. Even if your content isn’t high-quality — maybe you’ve not had time to get a great shot together — your caption and how you interact with your comments will make posting worth it.

Be personable and approachable. Your followers, and the algorithm, will love it.

My Top Tip: It’s always better to post than to leave a day or two without doing so. My advice is to make your posts worth engaging with. Ask questions in your captions; have fun with it if you can. Make it seem like you want to talk to your followers! Because you do, eh?

Have you had an unexpectedly positive reaction to one of your Instagram posts? What makes your posts gain unbeatable traction? Let me know in the comments.

Until next time…

Toning Down Your Tone Of Voice - When Tone Goes Too Far

We’ve all heard that having a strong tone of voice is vital for any brand to succeed online. In the age of social media and online marketing, content marketing is king, and to make effective, engaging content, you need to write with personality and conviction.

This is what a great tone of voice does: it shapes the marketing statements, calls to action and key messages you put out into the world into easily-understood, conversational language.

Think about it. How are your customers meant to feel compelled to act on your advertisements if they can’t really get to grips with what you’re saying? You wouldn’t fly to Cuba on your holidays and try to speak to everyone you met in French. You need to talk to people in language they understand!

But, things can get too complicated. When tone of voice starts dictating your messages, you might have a monster on your hands. You should only be using your tone to make your messages clearer, not the other way around.

This happens more than you think. As tone of voice is (or should be) created through a rigorous set of guidelines that binds how you communicate directly with your customers with your brand’s aims, it makes sense that the content you create using it fits those goals. But don’t let it overtake. If you’re beginning to think ‘this content I’m sharing doesn’t hit any of our targets, but it matches the brand’, it’s time to step back and think about what you’re creating your content for.

Not sure what I mean? Okay, let’s take a look at a great example of corporate copywriting to see how the company in question crafts its tone of voice around its content — and not the other way around.

Innocent Smoothies

Let’s look at a copywriting heavyweight.

Everyone in marketing knows Innocent’s modus operandi: they are sugary sweet and as chirpy as a newborn chick, but they get their message across quicker than a kingfisher. In and out like a flash.

Their trick is that all of their copy is really easy to read. Childish, even. You’ve read one of their adverts or bottle labels before you’ve even noticed, and it’s left you knowing more about them — as well as the feeling that you know them. That’s tone of voice.

Even their more corporate content has a touch of the whimsical about it, using simple, casual language to convey a company that — well, what do you think it conveys? How does this paragraph make you feel?

The point is, they’re leading the conversation with corporate goals and using a solid, well-embedded tone of voice to smooth out the sharp, business-like edges.

I’m not saying you need to hop on the cutesy copy bandwagon. It probably won’t suit you, and it has almost definitely been replicated to death. What I want you to remember is this simple rule:

Content first, then tone of voice. Everything else should fall into place.

Until next time…

Beyond Keywords: Content That Does More Than Rank

For some time, I’ve had clients email me in desperation, worried about a new Google update that’ll somehow reduce their hard-won ranking to rubble.

Every time Google threaten to change the way they crawl websites - and now more recently every time Instagram or Facebook decide to change their algorithms - it sends content creators and marketing departments into a panicked frenzy. What about our stats?! What about our processes?!

I’m going to say something controversial now: forget your ranking for a minute. Freeing, isn’t it?

 Writing with Freedom

For me, thinking about Google rankings and keyword selection feels like handcuffs are being slammed around my wrists, and that doesn’t make it easy to type. In fact, it makes it near impossible.

Thinking about your ranking is important, of course it is, but that’s what you consider at the first stage of your content planning. By the time you get to writing your content, whether it’s social media posts, photo captions or blog posts, all the technical work should be at least 80% done.

By considering what you’re using as keywords well in advance, you have the wonderfully freeing sensation of actually being able to write your content without distractions. Slip those keywords in at will. Make the words speak for themselves.

Or, even more controversially, don’t use keywords at all.

The Lost Art of Keywordless Content

I’m going to put this out there: I’m not entirely convinced keywords are necessary 100% of the time.

For a lot of content, yes, keywords are vital. Active content, like the descriptions of items for sale, needs keywords to enable customers to easily search and find the things they are looking for.

However, on the whole, if you’re writing a blog post or a page of web content, your words need to grab your readers. A thin paragraph of key phrases isn’t going to do that. What does engage your audience is reality, frivolity, sense and diverse, interesting content. People want to read something genuinely gripping, or emotive or amusing.

Google’s updates aren’t designed to make your life harder, they’re actually created with users in mind. They want to steer content away from churned-out robotic writing and into more creative, informative forms.

Essentially, Google will reward you if your content is useful.

Using Natural Speech

How often have you searched ‘shoes 5 black’ recently? Or ‘healthy snack’?

What we search for and how we search for it is changing, and with it so are the keywords we spend so long analysing. More and more, customers are using natural speech to find what they’re looking for. Think about how often you ask Alexa for some help, or tell Siri to find something out for you. You don’t chant ‘cheap holiday Lapland Christmas’ into your phone do you?

If you’re having trouble snapping out of a keyword-focused mindset — I understand, I’ve been there! — just read what you’re written out loud. Does it sound like a person said it? How could you improve the flow so it sounds more natural?

Above all, write your content for your customers, not for search engines. Gaming the system won’t improve your sales figures. Targeting your customers will.

Until next time…