Email Marketing Tip of the Week – Every message needs a purpose

In this week’s featured email marketing tip, I would like to touch on something that the majority of email marketers don’t seem to understand: every message needs a purpose. Not giving each message you send out a distinct message is one of the biggest mistakes in email marketing. My mailbox is flooded continually with messages from random organizations that seem to be sending out emails for no other reason besides the fact that they can, and that they are trying to sell me something.

I call this the “Hey what’s up? Buy this!” style of marketing, and it’s just not going to get the job done. Now, you don’t need to try to get all philosophical about trying to deliver exceptionally thought provoking messages. That wouldn’t be time or cost productive, and it still wouldn’t move your bottom line.

Giving Messages a Purpose

So how can you give each message you send out a purpose? As mentioned, you don’t need to do anything extraordinary in order to see results. If you’re trying to sell somebody a product directly, or get them to buy anything from your website, you need to entice them to do it. Don’t just say “Hey what’s up? Buy this!”, opt instead to try any of these tactics:

• Provide a detailed review
• Share a story about creating the product/service
• Share a story about someone else using the product/service
• Share any kind of story!
• Provide incentive to buy – Did you know that 80% of people on your list buy from a sale or from a free shipping offer?

Of course not all of your messages are targeted at creating sales. Some are targeted towards just sending people to your website, getting somebody to take another kind of action or just staying at the forefront of a person’s consciousness. The same rule applies, every message needs a purpose.

The only thing that’s as bad as “Hey what’s up? Buy this!” is the “Hey what’s up?” email that doesn’t seem to want to get anything done and isn’t even trying to sell me anything. Sure, what you sent out is claiming to be a newsletter, but did I receive any kind of news? Anything that is going to keep my attention, inform me, educate me, entertain me or be of any kind of use for me whatsoever?

If the answer to that was no, then why should I care? Listen, unless I work for your company or am prominently involved in it somehow, I don’t care that you hired a new VP of marketing.

Now, if Mr. or Ms. New VP of Marketing sends out a message with a nice little picture of himself or herself so I can see whose doing the talking and a nice little blurb explaining to me their excitement about the position, the changes I can expect to see, what else they bring to the table and so forth, I’m bound to be much more interested. The same message with a new perspective can change everything.

Don’t make one of the biggest mistakes in email marketing by not giving your messages a purpose. Even if your purpose is as simple as a sale on a new product or a free shipping offer, you’re still doing something more besides just saying “Hey, what’s up?!” Put this week’s email marketing tip to week regardless of what industry or sector you’re in and you’ll start to see improved results.

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