You can be in command of many aspects of your marketing and sales cycles, but you cannot command timing. (You can say the same thing about every facet of life.)
Imagine all the people who might, someday, need your services or products… but don’t need them right now. How do you stay “top of mind” with these folks, so that when they are ready to buy, they think of you?
The first approach that comes to mind? Email marketing. Get these people on your email list so you can regularly remind them you exist, and build rapport with them over time from the comfort of their inboxes.
I have a few qualms with this approach:
- How do you get people on your email list? The most familiar and effective tactics involve content upgrades on every blog post, a lead magnet on your home page, and a landing page for every podcast interview and speaking engagement. But so many of these give-me-your-email-and-I’ll-give-you-a-PDF tactics make me sigh gustily into my laptop screen. They’re all so similar. Forced. What’s original, meaningful, personal, unusual, memorable about this tactic?
- How do you keep them on your email list? I unsubscribe from email lists all the time. Rare is the email (even from people I actually know!) that I genuinely want to read and find valuable and satisfying every time (Eleanor Beaton, I’m looking at you. You’re one of the few!)
I could Google these questions and get a billion listicles full of tips for getting and keeping people on my email marketing list. The value of an email list has been proven over and over – my colleague Sadie gets a HUGE portion of her clothing sales from email alone! – but when I think about these tactics I feel heavy and bored. Instead of ignoring myself, it makes me wonder if there’s a better way.
However, my heaviness and boredom is about me. I feel overwhelmed by lots of emails. I roll my eyes when a website shoves a pop-up in my face asking me to download an ebook, which I know I’ll never read. I see you, urgency and scarcity and missing-out language! Knowing how I feel when I receive that stuff, I don’t want to impose it on anyone else.
(I’ve heard of companies and marketers who have tested different email marketing frequencies, and found that more emails lead to better results! Louis Gudema talks about his and Vista Print’s experience here. This shocks me. Email me every day and watch how fast I unsubscribe from your list.)
If my empathy getting in my way, though? Or am I thinking too much about how I feel, and too little about how I can serve others? Maybe there are people who LOVE the emails that I unsubscribe from, and would love mine. Surely plenty of people find content upgrades useful!
I wonder if I’m making an ass out of u and me by assuming that others feel the way I do – bored by email subscription tactics and overwhelmed by the volume of content in my inbox.
