Why has e-mail marketing response declined so dramatically?

Spam filters are one reason. But the main reason is probably the glut of e-mail messages each of us receives daily.

When you get 100 or 200 e-mail messages a day, just getting through them becomes a drain on your time and productivity.

To protect themselves, many people simply delete e-mails from anyone they don’t know.

They assume it is spam or don’t want to risk a virus infection. So they click ‘delete’ and your message is gone.

How do you overcome this obstacle and get your prospects to open, read, and respond to your e-mail marketing messages…and buy the products you are selling?

By becoming part of the prospect’s “E-mail Inner Circle”.

Let me explain…

According to a survey by Nielsen/NetRatings, most people regularly open and read e-mails from a maximum of 16 permission-based sources.

The only way for you to break into this inner circle of 16 correspondents whose e-mail messages the prospect will read is to displace someone already in that inner circle, the survey said.

An article in DM News concluded, “Marketers will have to enter that emerging inner circle of trusted companies from whom people are willing to keep reading e-mails.”

Okay, but how do you break into this inner circle of e-mail senders whose messages your prospects will open and read?

Despite the proliferation of free online newsletters (e-zines), the best way to become part of a prospect’s inner circle is to write and publish a truly valuable e-zine.

A great example is Agora’s Daily Reckoning, read by over a quarter of a million people interested in investing, politics, health, wealth, and travel.

If you publish your e-zine regularly (at least once a month) and provide content of genuine worth, readers will come to value your publication and establish a relationship with you.

You will have entered their “inner e-mail circle”, because they will view anything with your name in the ‘From’ line as being from a trusted adviser and worth their time to at least open.

Agora doesn’t charge for a subscription to the Daily Reckoning, but by marketing aggressively to the Daily Reckoning subscriber list, they generate millions of dollars in online sales each year at very little cost.

Similar to an e-zine, some publishers send short news bulletins to their subscribers on a regular basis.

For instance, ComputerWorld magazine (CW) sends a daily online update with short items from the magazine.

CW’s daily online updates have become part of the inner circle for many IT professionals who must keep up with new developments in hardware and software.

You can purchase a short online ad in these updates, thereby buying your way into the reader’s inner e-mail circle.

Another way to break into the prospect’s inner circle is with periodic service and upgrade notices.

Software users, for example, will read and open e-mails from the software publisher that contain news about upgrades, technical information, or service policies.

If your customers regularly need to receive service and product news from you, get in the habit of delivering it via e-mail.

Then they will be ‘trained’ to read your e-mails, so when you send a promotion, it too will get opened and read.

A Merkle survey shows that customers also value and read 2 specific types of e-mails: (a) transaction confirmations and (b) account status updates.

So you can get your promotional message read by embedding it into routine e-mails that contain transactional or account status information.

A good example is Amazon, whose customers open and read the e-mails it sends because they might contain news about their order.

Many paid-subscription newsletter publishers break into the customer’s inner circle by offering timely news and updates through free e-mail alerts.

When you pay for your monthly subscription, the publisher offers you a bonus: additional content, sent periodically via e-mail, to keep you updated on the topic between regular issues.

The catch: You have to give the publisher your e-mail address to receive this free online bonus.

The publisher quickly builds an e-list of subscribers who eagerly anticipate and read the e-mails, because they are viewed as valuable information they pay for as part of their subscription.

The most successful publishers keep the information content of the e-mails high, but also liberally promote products and services to these e-mail alert recipients.

Another way to become part of the prospect’s inner circle is to form a club and invite him to join it.

Reason: Your prospects will read e-mails from clubs, associations, online communities of interest, subscription Websites, and other organizations of which they are members.

Therefore, if you can create a club or have your e-mail distributed by one of these membership organizations, you can easily enter the prospect’s e-mail inner circle.

As a rule of thumb, whenever you can send e-mail to your prospect using one of the above methods, your chances of getting opened and read increase exponentially vs. sending a typical promotional e-mail.

Remember, people buy from people they know, like, and trust.

When you become part of the inner circle, your prospects know, like, and trust the e-mail messages you send, giving you an inside track to getting them to spend their online shopping dollars with you.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

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