Connecting The Reader With The News

Email Marketing: Connecting the Reader with the News

I often display this picture at seminars I have the good fortune to present at. After the laughter dies, a serious message follows. When broadcasting your message especially via email marketing, you need to make sure there is a connection between the reader and your news.

Many email newsletters are used for sales and not marketing. They are easy to spot. They usually have a corny strapline then mention the product/service accompanied by a price, an image and a link to go and buy. These email broadcasts do work for commoditised products or services but the emphasis is always on price and margins are typically low. These emails play a numbers game and rarely require much thought. Even good retailers don’t lead with price, they lead with lifestyle promises and create aspirations. Price lead email selling will give you back what you asked for, low margin sales.

On the other side of the coin we are often tempted to put in news stories about our latest award or accolade, the company golf day out and the chairman’s welcome. Stories often make our newsletters that have appeared in the mainstream media and are republished verbatim.

As a reader, I often don’t care about your award or golf day (although these activities do play a marketing role just not right now) and I sure as hell don’t need to read another “Welcome to our newsletter/website/snorefest” from the chairman. And yes, the industry news may be of mild interest to me, but I want you to translate it into what it should mean as features, benefits or drawbacks to me. I want to know your opinion on the news.

It’s hard to make our email marketing customer centric and not price lead. Our enthusiasm about what we do is rarely identical to your customers. As a marketer it is our job to put ourselves in the reader’s position and ask, ‘is there a connection between the reader and the news?’