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Open Your Email – What’s in it For Me?

 In Email Marketing, OpenMoves Email System

The “me” in the title refers to the recipient of the email, not the sender. So often, I see this switched in B2B email newsletters where the featured content is all about the company sending the newsletter, which may or may not be interesting to the reader. A great example of this is when a company wins an award and wants to share that achievement in an email newsletter. By all means, let your contacts know that you received an award for your amazing services or products. Just make sure you ask yourself as you’re writing the content, “What’s in it for my readers?”

Email campaigns easily help you stay top-of-mind and add perceived value, but email also has the potential to be a much more useful tool. In social media, a campaign is successful when there is a two-way conversation between you and your followers. Email is really the predecessor to social media in many ways and should also be viewed as a way to open two-way communication with your readers. Don’t just talk at your readers – provide content that is useful to them – and “listen” to readers when you see which links they clicked and which ones they didn’t.

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Here are some simple ideas you can use today to make your emails more relevant:

  • Personalize, personalize, personalize. Particularly in B2B where you may have direct relationships with your readers outside of email, include personalization techniques like first name, sales rep contact info, areas of interest, etc. Learn how to insert personalization into your OM3 email.
  • Take personalization a step further with dynamic content, which enables you to tailor your campaign such that different segments of your audience receive different content, different offers, images, copy or calls-to-action. For example, say you are sending your monthly newsletter to your B2B recipients but you want to vary the call-to-action based on their demographics and whether they are a client or a prospect…dynamic content enables you to have more 1:1 relevant messaging. Get started using dynamic content.
  • Use a question as the title of your first piece of featured content. Not only are questions engaging, but they can also address a concern or something the reader may have wanted to know about your company or product. Better yet, send a survey or ask via your social media channels for questions that you can answer in your next email. Learn more about surveys
  • Use the click-through data in your past OM3 email campaign reports to see which content pieces garnered the most interest. For example, a company noticed a sharp spike in clicks when they provided industry news over their new product announcements. Perhaps the issue was that the new product announcements needed to read more like, “here’s why we think this product would benefit you” and less like, “look at our great new product!” And the new product may not have been relevant to each contact. This is another opportunity to use dynamic content to show product info for specific contacts where appropriate.
  • Want to share news about an award? First, thank your readers for helping you achieve this accolade. Then, let them know why this award is important to you in terms of being able to deliver a better product or service.

The bottom line: if you keep in mind what will offer the most value to your readers, then you’ll also get the most value out of your email newsletters.

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