Tag: email tips

Don’t Be Afraid To Warn People When Things Go Wrong

Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

When Things Go Wrong

Some people think that using a service like Rocket Responder is only there for sending out marketing messages or other promotional offers but it can be great at many other times too, such as when things go wrong.

As we have already seen an autoresponder is much more useful than that – you can actually send out messages where you for example:

  • give advice
  • offer tips and tricks
  • tell stories about your life (yes you really shoud do this) and
  • solicit feedback

But you can also use emails to break bad news and manage expectations.

Say if you know that you have to take your website offline for a few hours or more (maybe you are having a major server upgrade or some such other major event).

Or maybe the launch that you were planning has been delayed for a month…or you have run out of stock…or the affiliate product you are promoting has run into problems or any one of 101 other things.

Then inform your subscribers about the bad news and while many may be upset, many will welcome you being upfront and honest with them…and in any event they will be less upset than if you had not told them in the first place.

Here are some points you might want to cover in a “bad news” email:

  • Explain exactly what is happening (eg our current servers cannot cope with demand and we are moving so a super new system)
  • Explain what the effects will be on the customer (as a result we expect our site to be offline for anything up to 24 hours from this time)
  • Suggest what your subscribers should do. (so don’t panic if you can’t access the site during this time as we we should be back up and running by Monday)
  • Apologize for any problems the issue may cause. (We are really sorry that you won’t be able to access the site during this time but this is to ensure that you continue to get a great customer service from us.)

You don’t have to write it exactly like that but if you are stuck to know what to write then those points should form a solid platform for your email.

Also don’t forget that when the problem is solved then send another email saying that everything is good again – this might also be a good time to offer some sort of offer or promotion as a mark of your goodwill.

 

Adding A Picture To Your Emails

Patrick Griffin 1 Comment

Adding A Picture To Your Emails

Adding A Picture To Your Emails

I get a little annoyed when I hear people talking about their list as merely a marketing resource.

Yes your RocketResponder list can be a very valuable marketing resource…but it is much more than that.

Your list, first and foremost, is a collection of individual people, human beings with their own distinct personalities, likes and dislikes.

So when you communicate with them then you must always remember that you are talking to a group of individual humans and not just your marketing list.

An easy way of showing that you value the personal touch is by showing your subscribers that you are human too.

One way we do that at TimTech is by including our photographs on emails when we contact our subscribers.

Here are a couple of recent examples to show you what I mean:

Adding A Picture To Your Emails 1

Adding A Picture To Your Emails 2

Why not try the same thing for yourself.

Be yourself. Be personal. Show your subscribers that you care. Adding a picture to your emails is one way of doing just that.

Three Top Tips For An Autoresponder Email Series

Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Autoresponder Email Series

There are times when it is difficult to know just what to write about for your autoresponder email series.

You are using RocketResponder to build up a nice list of subscribers but just what are you going to tell them?

Fear not because here are three quick top tips to get you thinking along the right lines:

  1. Make the difficult simple – You had to learn the stuff you know about right? Well, so will the people who are new to the niche you are expert in. Make an email series, or a series of email series, explaining some of the key products you sell or some of the key concepts relevant to your niche.
  2. Share your secrets – Be open and upfront with your tricks of the trade. I am not suggesting you give away all your most sensitive trade secrets but use your experience to give others a step up the ladder.
  3. Build up interest at key times – Do you have a big launch coming up or is there a big event happening in your niche. Don’t wait until the day to tell people about this but build up hype and interest in the weeks leading up to it. Then when the big day actually comes you know that your list will be as responsive as it possibly can be. Just don’t over do it though or you run the risk of making your list sick and tired of the event by the time it comes round.

There are three quick ideas and I am sure that once you start thinking about communicating with your subscribers, that you will find many more ideas of your own.

Now all you have to do is get writing.

Just A Reminder About Why You Are Here

Patrick Griffin 1 Comment

yes checkbox

Everybody you send an email to has got something in common…each of your email subscribers has given you permission to contact them.

But, being human, sometimes we forget that we have signed up to any given list in the first place.

So you could do your email subscribers a favor by reminding them of how they got to be on your list in the first place.

A cool way to do this is to include a little blurb in the footer of every email you send out.

It could say something like this:

“You are receiving this email because you signed up to my blog/filled out an online form on my website etc. to receive emails from me.

“I work hard to ensure I send out relevant emails to my subscribers but understand that needs and circumstances change.

“Therefore if this information is no longer relevant from you and you don’t want to hear from me then please use the “unsubscribe” link right here.”

Including something like this is good because it shows that:

  • you care about your email subscribers’ needs
  • you fully appreciate that you need their permission to contact them
  • you genuinely want to give them relevant information
  • you don’t want to waste their time if they no longer want to hear from you
  • you are totally upfront and honest about how to subscribe from your list.

 

Three Quick Email Tips Your Customers Will Love

Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Quick Email Tips

We know that getting your emails opened is half the battle because just because someone has agreed to receive emails from you is no guarantee they will look at them. Here are some quick email tips your customers will love.

Once you get them opened you need to get them read and that means by providing content that your recipients will find interesting and useful.

By doing this you will find that people actually look forward to your emails and this, in turn, should mean that, over time, it gets easier to get regular customers to open your emails.

Here are three quick content tips which your customers will thank you for:

  • ask for help – most people love to be helpful and will happily do so if asked. Email is a great way of doing this and building up a two way flow of communication with your list. Examples might be you want to update your website, newsletter, blog, product line etc, so you want to know what your most valuable customers would like to see before you make any changes.
  • early bird offers – one of the huge benefits of email is that they are fast so you could encourage your customers to open your emails by making email-only offers available to them. So if you are having a new promotion launching on  your website you could give your a list a headstart by informing them about in advance of the general release.
  • bullet points – the traditional bullet point list looks exactly like this one – written as a vertical list. However as people increasingly read business emails on smartphones, where space is at a premium, one trick is to make your list of bullet points horizontal instead of vertical, so that it looks like this:

Main benefits of x: * super fast, * cost effective,  *looks fantastic

Do you have any email tips which work well for you? If so then feel free to leave your comments below.