Chase my money. Don’t waste my time.
I have noticed in the past few months that i have keep getting mails from online services and web sites, where obvious i had subscribed to their list, but unfortunately i could not remember by their sayings who they are and what they do. So i had to go over their site again and check that. Really frustrating.
I am going to write about some points and patterns i have come during my online presence the last years, in terms of email marketing. What i will say is absolutely from a user’s point of view. I have no experience at all on the subject. I will provide references but in the end this is my experiences as an end user.
In a regular week, i would subscribe to over than 10 ‘Subscribe to learn more’ or ‘Subscribe to be the first…’ kinda lists, on landing pages with products that haven’t gone on air yet but are promising that will in the near future.
That is not bad at all. It’s a really neat marketing technique that tries to engage me with the product. The bad thing here is that if i can not remember who is this email from i most likely going to delete it immediately. I do not have time for researching twice. Regularly, this happens when i am getting a response to my subscription after a long period of time, with no introduction, not a small reminder at all. It will also happen when you sending me mails like check this and check that with absolutely no value to me.
So here are some points.
First, when you get a user subscribed on your email list it is like when you meet someone in person and he goes like “Hi, i am Kostas!”. Are you going to shut up and walk away? No! You are going to introduce your self back. So why when a user subscribing to your list why you don’t send a “Hello Back” mail immediately? If you do, the user(me) i am going to know that you took me seriously and also that it’s actually someone on the other end of the line. So trust between you and your users is a key here. I must be sure that this list is still active or abandoned years ago.
Second, after i see that you respond on my introduction of my self i want to know you better and see what is this all about. Send me a “How are you?” once on a while. But most importantly, what i really need is to send me something that has value to me and send it often, before i forgot you. Because, once i do, your mails are going to end up in my mail trash and that is bad for business.
As Jobs said:
“Education is the best marketing!”.
Try to educate me. Send me something that will have value for me. This is the reason why i subscribed to you on the first place. Because i wanted to know more about what you are doing and/or i really liked your product/service. So if, for example, you are offering online Law Consulting services, send me a tiny and free advice once a week. That’s the way to engage me on your efforts.
So here is an example that will make those points clear. I subscribed on a service some time ago and this is how they respond to me.
Now this is a name and a service that i will make some time to forget. Even though i decided afterwards that the service was not interesting me. They also made their intentions clear. They are there to help me. Just like on a physical store the service is always near by.
At last, for those who are going to say that it is form of spam, i can’t agree with you, since they’re sending those mails with my approval. Also there must be an easy way to unsubscribe whenever i want.
Finishing of my first post on Medium, i will say that i would certainly prefer to take off my wallet and give money to you for something that really deserves it than you wasting my time and thus your money.
