Have you ever subscribed to an email newsletter only to receive a barrage of sales pitches?
You either ignore them for a while then unsubscribe, or just unsubscribe immediately.
Are you doing this to your clients? Do you send out emails that just offer ‘stuff’, ‘promotions’, ‘sales’ etc? Or do you offer something insightful, something interesting, something to enhance your client’s life and to reciprocate them for their time in engaging with you?
I recently signed up for a decluttering newsletter – yeah, I’m trying to simplify my life! The first email heading is this: Paperwork – how to declutter. Ooh – I always have a desk-full of papers, so this might be worth reading. Apart from being ‘War & Peace’ (so long), it was just a wall of words telling me to pay $54 to get their program – followed by the information that the $54 would be covered in just the savings on bill late fees. This does not correlate with the heading: Paperwork – how to declutter. This is a sales pitch, without any intrinsic value.
There are numerous marketing tools, however in this situation two come to mind:
- pull marketing; and
- push marketing
A general rule of thumb is that push marketing is more effective for products, pull marketing for services.
To continue from my example above, if the author of that newsletter gave me one little pearl, like let’s say (and I’m making this up based on something I found has worked for bills):
- All bills go into one tray
- In that tray there is one page on the top that needs to have a line completed for each bill, with the amount and due date filled in. (Sit it on top, so it is always visible)
- On one day a week (or with your pay cycle – set this in your reminders) pay the bills that are due before the next cycle
- Cross out the ones that are paid and there is your sense of accomplishment! Done!
- File the paid bills monthly.
This is pull marketing – I try this and voila, it is easy, manageable and makes a difference. Therefore, I would be more inclined to pay the $54 to get the program, because this has helped me…
People like to buy, they don’t like being sold to! Make your content valuable and people will be happy to give you their money!