Imagine the nicest, friendliest, and helpful person you ever met is now in charge of sending and answering emails for you. This is the kind of person that is bright and cheerful, always helpful, never crabby, does not get tired, and is available 24 hours, seven days per week, for immediate responses.
This is the goal of excellent email automation.
Here are the top five tips for those new to email automation:
1. Use Personality
Just because the emails are automated does not mean they have to be cold or robotic. Look at these two different approaches of how to respond automatically to an email request ….
Response #1
Your email was received. Do not reply to this email because this email address is not monitored.
This is boring, robotic, and not good at all.
Response that is Better
Hi,
This is Carol. So nice to hear from you! I usually respond to emails personally within 24 hours after I have enough coffee, so please give me a bit of time to answer. In the meantime, please click this link to confirm you get my responses { insert link here }. It also has a discount coupon for your next order just as my way of saying thank you for contacting us.
I look forward to speaking with you,
Carol
Notice the difference? Both are auto-replies, but the second one has a personality. “Carol” may not even exist and may simply be an imaginary person. However, she is nice, friendly, and immediately encourages a business transaction. Then the email request may be routed to anyone who will read the request and make a response as Carol’s assistant.
2. Make Great Subject Lines
There are two reasons to use the subject line carefully. The first is that email-filtering systems will filter out stuff that is an obvious sales pitch and the email goes to the junk folder never to be read by anyone. The second reason is a great subject line makes it almost irresistible to open and read the email.
Here is an example:
Subject Line #1
Work at home. Make tons of MONEY!!!!!!
This subject line is easy for email filters to recognize as a spam.
Subject Line that is Better
I broke my ankle
Both emails are about working from home, but the second one has the reason in the subject line why someone would work from home and sounds much friendlier.
3. DO NOT USE ALL CAPS!!!!!!!!!
All caps is SHOUTING and excessive use of exclamation marks has the reverse of making it seem important, it reeks of high-pressure sales tactics and is a major turn off.
4. Opt-Out is the Law
Under the CAN-SPAM Act emails must have the following:
- No false or misleading information in the email header
- Subject line must be about the email
- If the email is an ad, say so
- Include a physical postal address
- How to opt-out from receiving further messages
- Honor opt-out choices quickly
- Monitor third-parties who send emails for you
What this means is the header that says where the email comes from should say the correct company not something else. The subject line must relate to the email content as we gave in the example above about breaking an ankle, with the email saying that because of a broken ankle the person started working from home. A subject line of “Your daughter was raped” for an email about a car wash promotion would be illegal.
If the email is an ad, just put “this is an advertisement” somewhere. Make it easy for opt-out and take this one step further. We love to include these two opt-out options. 1) Click here to opt-out to immediately stop receiving further emails from us, and; 2) Click here to opt-out and tell us how stupid we are at the same time. Negative feedback is really helpful as well.
5. Work with a great company like RocketResponder for the best results in your email automation campaigns.
