Anyone marketing online in the late nineties knows it didn't take much at all to get someone on your subscriber list. It took even less for them to stay on your list.
Online marketing was such a novelty; people read just about anything they received.
Fast forward to 2013. Building a list of subscribers takes more effort than ever before. Keeping them on your list is more of a challenge too.
Getting people to open emails is tougher by the day. So much in fact, some people have an open rate of as little as 5%. Even when someone opens an email, there's no guarantee they will read your message to the end.
On the flip side there are some experts who have as high as a 50% open rate. Their subscribers can't wait for their next message to arrive, reading every single word in the message.
So what's the distinction?
Deliverability
The number of emails not reaching their intended destination is staggering. According to Phil Akilade in 2009, 10.5% of emails did not reach the inbox and in the first half of 2011, 19% of email sent did not reach the inbox.
In 2012 the percentage increased.
Imagine if over 20% of your emails are not making it to the intended destination. How much revenue are you losing with this one factor?
No value
Far too many people put little thought into what they write or how the information will benefit their reader. They send garbage information to their end user.
Many think by simply sending something that's all they need to do. Wrong!
No Unique Perspective
The way we communicate in business has changed; dramatically. What people are desperately seeking is perspective and point of view.
It takes more than simply providing information. Your readers want to know about you and what makes you unique.
On a recent business trip I purposely didn't check emails in three accounts for over four days. To say I got a huge eye opener when I put time aside for the sole purpose of checking these three accounts is an understatement.
"What a bunch of garbage!" I thought as I went through the accounts.
After scanning the subject line of over 1,000 emails I deleted 95% of the messages without reading "the next great offer that will change my life."
In the few minutes it took me to continually press the delete button it became very clear why most messages are not getting read. In a word, BORING!
There was such similarity with the majority of messages not much stood out.
With several that I did open up it became apparent very quickly that not much thought was put into the body of the message. Most were trying to sell me something.
Granted, emails are used to promote and sell, but if that's all you're doing, you become a commodity rather than a personality.
If you don't infuse your personality into what you do, people will buy solely based on price and nothing else. You've positioned yourself as a commodity rather than a personality.
However, if you position your perspective and point of view, people buy you. And they often are willing to pay more.
Your point of view is what you stand for, what you believe, what's important to you. It's also about what you won't stand for.
When's the last time you thought about your point of view and how you are conveying it?
One of the quickest ways to find out is to ask yourself these questions.
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