It’s better to give than it is to receive. That’s especially true for email marketers, says Ryan Farrell, marketing strategist for LinkedSelling, a leading marketing consultant for companies on LinkedIn.
LinkedSelling sends roughly 3.5 million emails a month. At that volume, staying in front of your audience (and out of the spam folder) means consistently giving subscribers information or tools that will directly improve their lives, Farrell said.
“The goal is to help people be successful,” Farrel said. “The more successful they are, the more they’re going to trust us.”
“The more they trust us, the more likely they are to become a client,” he added.
Farrell explained LinkedSelling’s approach on a recent episode of the Pushing Send podcast from rasa.io. Read on to learn more about how LinkedSelling has been able to boost client engagement with its emails.
Give guides and reports ⇒ Gain client trust
LinkedSelling keeps its email audience hooked by creating reference guides, including workbooks and trend reports. It also conducts at least four webinars throughout the year, which helps them connect with and land paying clients, Farrel said. The information about these resources is shared over email, he added.
Offering guides, workshops and webinars that your audience is interested in helps “combat the coldness of funnel marketing, where everybody is just getting herded around like sheep,” Farrell said. All it takes is one thoughtful eBook or guide for your audience to start seeing your email content as trusted advice rather than slimy sales pitch, Farrell said.
Make sure that whatever content you do create—whether a webinar or an eBook—is quality, he added.
You want clients to know that “if they do open an eBook or a guide or they show up to a webinar, that it doesn’t feel like a waste of their time,” Farrell said. “That’s going to erode the trust in you.”
Give a targeted message ⇒ Gain a happier audience
Successful email marketing depends on delivering the right information to the right person at the right time. For a company as large LinkedSelling, keeping that personal touch can be a challenge, Farrell said.
“Someone that’s running a $50 million IT company has different needs and goals than somebody who is running a two-person business-coaching company and is just kind of getting started,” Farrell said.
Figure out who is in your audience and group them by their needs. Then identify the specific product or service that is most likely to resonate with each group. For example, a training program offered to small business owners isn’t as relevant to your corporate audience, Farrell said. You want to make sure that any email content promoting small business training goes to small business owners, rather than your entire email list, he said.
“Figure out the right way to segment your audience and get the right audience in front of the right people. That was when we started seeing better results,” Farrell said.
Give a direct point of contact ⇒ Gain a more personal client relationship
There are thousands of marketing emails going out every minute asking subscribers to click on a link to sign up for a product or service. What if you made that exchange more personal? Farrell said LinkedSelling will often direct subscribers to reply to the marketing email with their response. The result is a more personal connection right off the bat, he said.
For example, when LinkedSelling is promoting an upcoming workshop, it will direct readers to “just hit reply and let us know” if they’re interested in the event. From there, several members of their team take time to respond to every single reply, he said.
This takes work on your end to make sure that email replies go to an actual person in your company and that that person responds. But it’s doable and it’s effective, Farrell said.
“Having somebody reach back out to say something nice gets conversations going,” Farrell said. “It lets them know that somebody is listening.”
