Email is a great way to stay in touch with clients and prospects. It’s quick, relatively easy and extremely cost effective.
Here are my Top Three Tips for using emails to your greatest advantage:
1. Make it Useful
Include relevant, helpful information that your audience will appreciate. Think about what problems your customers are dealing with and how you might help them solve it. Share you knowledge and expertise to establish yourself as an authority – and become a resource when they are ready to spend money.
If you continue to consistently provide your customers with something they can actually use, you will continue to be a welcome guest in their inbox.
2. Don’t Overdo It
Like all things, email sent to clients and prospects is best in moderation. Depending upon the tone and subject matter you provide this will differ. Ideally, you want to strike a balance between frequent enough to “stay in touch” but not too frequently so that you become a pest. Customers that hear from you too often will view you as pushy, and that’s a huge turn off.
As a rule of thumb, messages that are more educational/informational in nature can be sent with more frequency than pieces that are strictly promotional in nature, but it is still best to avoid “overexposure.”
3. Include An Opt Out
The FTC has enacted the CANN-SPAM act that requires commercial emailers provide an opt out for those receiving their emails. This could be as simple as a line at the bottom letting readers know they can reply to the email with “unsubscribe” in the subject line.
The people who are asking to be removed from your mailing list are really doing you a favor anyway, when you think about it. They are helping you whittle down your list to your most valuable clients and prospects. Those that are really interested in what you have to offer.