Dealing with new email subscribers: Imagine you invite someone into your home for the first time.
What might they think if you ushered them into your front room, invited them to sit down and then left them alone to twiddle their thumbs while you went to your office or study to work?
Well they would begin to feel:
- uncomfortable
- ill at ease
- unwanted and
- be left wondering why they ever accepted your invitation in the first place.
It is exactly the same situation if someone signs up to your RocketResponder list and you don’t immediately send them a welcome email.
They are in your front room so go ahead and talk to them to make them feel wanted, special and loved.
Your “welcome” email should be sent out immediately anyone joins your list and it should contain the following information:
- An introduction – say “hello” to the new subscriber by introducing yourself and briefly introducing your business. You want to give the main headlines here and not the whole company back story.
- Points of contact – tell your new subscriber how they can contact you. Phone, email, toll-free number, Twitter, Skype, FaceBook, support ticket are just some examples. You choose how accessible you want to be but seriously consider giving your customers multiple ways to connect with you.
- Set a schedule – If you are smart you will have an initial follow up email series set up so you can say something like: “Over the next few days/weeks/months you will be hearing from me every “x” days or so so look out for those emails. I have lined up some great free tips for you. You are going to love it.” Obviously you don’t have to say exactly that, just give them an idea of what is coming up.
- Anticipate problems – When people are new to something they get confused, make mistakes or just want some help quickly. So if you have a website with a FAQ page you could point them to that or give them your preferred method of contact to get their query answered quickly.
- Keep it short – Just say what you need to say and keep it at that. Remember you could have this subscriber for months or even years, so you have plenty of time to establish a dialogue with them. Don’t bombard them with information on the welcome email. Remember it is a welcome email so simply make them feel welcome and then stop writing.
Some really good points, especially keep it short. No one really has time for really log winded emails any more. And I like the idea of points of contact. I’ve started using my phone number just as a confidence booster to the subscriber that I am a real person and that they can call me. And I love Skype. It’s the best way to build a relationship and I work on getting them to add me.
Good information.
Nick
Yes indeed. You clearly have a good grip of this entire subject area.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
I would say first impressions count. Make the first contact a good one! Great advice here… 🙂
Carl
just treat people as you would like to be treated – it really works.