When social media invaded the online marketing scene a couple of years ago, many observers predicted that it would spell the end for email marketing.
But not so, says MarketingSherpa’s 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, which found that the only two marketing tactics to see an increased budget in 2009 were social media and email. And not so, says Ajay Goel, posting in iMediaConnection. In fact, he sees the two channels becoming increasingly integrated …but that process will transform email as we know it today, because “there is a kind of intimacy people are coming to expect in their interactions with not only entrepreneurs and small businesses, but big corporations as well. They want to work with people and communities, not companies.” I.e., now that they’ve tried it, they’re never going back.
Ajay describes five ways you can retool your emails to better line them up with the expectations that have been set by social media:
- Identify your emails’ author(s). Assign employees whose personalities reflect that of your brand, and make them visible. As Ajay says, “Let your customers know a real person is reaching out to them, and you will find more of them are willing to reach back.”
- Let their personality shine through. Once you reveal your authors as real people, don’t hobble them with a bunch of corpspeak rules. If you’ve got the right people in the job, there’s no reason not to let them be themselves. Ajay again: “Funny, nostalgic, hopeful – even stressed – are human tones that will draw readers in.”
- Stress community… not product. Email was never intended to be a one-shot deal, so why treat it that way? Think of your subscribers more as readers than buyers: entertain them, inspire them, move them. As long as you’ve got someone coming back, you probably have someone who will do business with you when they’re ready.
- Listen. “Create bold polls that assess user moods and attitudes. Keep track of the conversations your community leader has with users on Facebook; use this information in communicating back with customers and prospects.”
- Don’t forget to show up. Once you invite your email readers into the real-time world of social media, they’ll expect to interact with your business in real time; so make sure the communities your emails point to are active ones. Don’t invite friends to a party and then forget to show!
