In this free Community Connect call, I share one of nine current trends in email marketing. The 7-minute clip is an introduction to the full one hour call focusing on 9 current email marketing trends.
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The transcript, lightly edited for better readability, is below the video.
Transcript
If you prefer to read the content of the short audiogram above, here it is for you…
I will state that these are not in any specific order, any special order of importance. These are things that I just kept running into, and experiencing and then found names for. And there’s a thing, the first trend is interactivity in emails, and I was like, “Interactivity. What do you mean? Like playing games or what does that mean?” Well, interactivity is a huge trend that continues to grow. In a nutshell, it’s when a reader of your email takes some action. That means you have to put that action in the email. It’s clicking a link. It’s clicking a link to watch a video. It’s clicking a link to buy. It’s clicking a link to register. It’s clicking a link to take a survey, or to do a quiz, or to reply to you. That is what email interactivity is.
You’re probably also seeing more of that in your emails, that people are asking more questions. They are asking you to reply. I just sent one out as a test, as you probably saw, because many of you replied. I will say that I got more replies to asking that question about lead magnets than I ever get on any email where I ask for people to reply and tell me something or give me some feedback or something. They’re still coming in, and it’s three days since I sent that.
When you think about another step, … I didn’t write it down, but I’m remembering it from what I was reading, is that most email is opened … Like 20% of emails are opened within the first hour [of being sent]. And after that, opens decline. So the fact that two to three days later people are still responding to that one, that’s pretty good.
Now, why do you want interactivity? This is why this is so important and why people are doing it. You want that interactivity because it tells your email service provider, plus the one that’s receiving it on the other end, that you and the receiver are friends. The fact that they’re taking action, it’s as if they are getting a personal email and replying to you or doing something you asked them to do. That is important for keeping your emails, your broadcast emails, your email marketing emails out of the spam filters.
What it comes down to is that you want your readers to do something, not just read passively and then file it away and move on to the next thing. You want them to do something in your email because that is a clue to the email service providers that that is an active person who wants your content. I think I’ve known this intuitively, but I’ve now read this in lots of places about this whole spam thing and that you just want to make sure that happens.
You saw the survey that I did … And that’s a real survey. I was really curious. It really is a conversation. I didn’t make this up. It was a conversation that’s been going on in the Marketing Trailblazers Community. But then I wanted to test it. So I was like, “Well, what can I ask? Oh, we want to know this,” so I test it. The answers are all over the place. That is fantastic because it’s giving me, and when I share it with my audience, it’s going to give us some rich data and information about what we can do in the long run.
Depending on the question … A very common one is, on a first email, thanks for joining my list. Now could you reply and tell me your biggest challenge with X, Y, Z? We’ve all seen that; it is still a valid way to start getting to know your audience.
Plus, one of the things I read about this spam thing is that you want people to respond to the very first email that they get from you, the very first one. I was reading something where somebody gave several examples that I’ll tell you. So the first one he talks about is what is your biggest challenge, or what is your biggest problem, or that sort of thing. So you get to know your audience better. You get to know their pain points, and you can use this for segmenting, which I’ll talk about a minute, and building relationships by asking them questions and replying back to them. Of course, if somebody sends you [an email], you need to reply back to them.
The other thing is, he had a couple of really good things here, asking, “If you find the tips in this email useful to you for blah, blah, blah, reply back to this email by saying, “Give me more.'” So then you have an opportunity to send out another piece of valuable content to that person when they reply. liked that one, too.
The other thing is if you’re sending out a lead magnet, if somebody subscribes to your lead magnet, the first email can include in it something like, “Is the access link working with you? Please reply and just let me know. Got it or no I didn’t. Then, I’ll make sure I take care of that and get it to you.” That’s being helpful. That’s being useful.
Those are some ideas for how to start that conversation and encourage people to reply to you. As I said, there are quizzes, surveys, games, contests, calls to action are what’s important in your interactive messaging because you want them to engage with you – in the email – in some way.
I saw Elizabeth asking, “Why didn’t you use a survey program like SurveyMonkey?” Yes, totally intentional, as I’m saying because I wanted people to reply to my email. I wanted to get the interaction on the email because that is what is sending a signal to the service providers on either end that it’s a legitimate email. It’s not a spam email. I hope that makes sense. Okay, that’s trend number one, email interactivity in your email.
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