Savvy entrepreneurs know that email is a very powerful marketing tool.  It is a low cost way to establish a top-of-mind presence with your customers.  But a lot of companies take advantage of email, to their own detriment, and instead of making a connection with that customer, they just end up annoying them.  So, with that, let me tell you a story.

My Story

Last year, I attended a presentation at a conference by a large travel technology consulting firm (who will remain nameless to protect the guilty).  At the end of the presentation, the speaker offered to send the slide pack to anyone who wanted it, and asked us to drop off a business card.  I only had my personal cards on me, so I used that as an opportunity to introduce  myself and speak to the presenter.

At the end of our chat, I specifically asked him what he’d do with our information, as I said this was my personal account and I know all about the “just give me your card” thing.  He told me it was just to send out the slides, not to worry.  I received the information I requested about a week later, and everyone’s happy.

Flash forward to last week, and now I’m totally annoyed and angry.  I’ve received an unsolicited bulk email from said consulting firm.  It’s purely a promotional piece that really has nothing to do with me, isn’t even personalised, and is most certainly the exact kind of thing I specifically asked about when I gave them my details.  Not cool.

Even worse:  they aren’t using an industry standard mailing product, like Aweber.  So I can’t unsubscribe or complain! Totally not right.  So, instead of emailing me hoping to pique my interest in one of their products, I’m now writing an article about how to annoy people via email.  Not exactly what they had in mind, eh?

3 Ways to Annoy Your Customers Via Email

Right – I think this was the reason you came here.  The list:

• Don’t Tell Them What You’ll Do With Their Email: You need to tell people what you are going to do with their email.  Regardless whether that’s on the signup page, or on the initial “welcome to the list” email, set expectations.  It doesn’t have to be complicated or flowery.  ”We’ll be in touch with you on the last Friday of the month with words from our director as well as a special coupon for you.”  Once you tell them your plan, stick to it.  Nobody likes surprises in their Inbox.
• Send Them Spam Instead of Value: If you are using email just to push promotions and 100% sales content, you’ll fail.  Period.  If people want to buy something that badly, they’ll find you.  But if you want your customers to actually open your email and take action, you need to provide some value.  Give them a reason to look forward to your notes.  If you are doing it right, people should be emailing YOU if you’re late with your newsletter after a day or two.  Relationships first, business second.  Write that down.
• Don’t Give Them A Way Out: I could go on for days about why you need a proper bulk mailing software.  As I mentioned, we promote Aweber not because we get a commission (we do), but because it is best-in-class for mail deliverability, which I think is the most important feature.  But you need to give people an easy way out.  For one, in many countries, it is part of the data privacy law.   More importantly, it is the right thing to do.  Otherwise you are just a spammer.

I Lose, You Win

So, I am still pretty annoyed with this company.  But my loss is your gain.  Why?  Well, during the month of February only, we are offering  a STOP Annoying Your Customers check-in.  For only £75 GBP (that’s $121 US Dollar), we will write up a one page report about how well we think you’re doing and if we think you’re annoying your customers.  You can apply this package to:

• your email newsletter
• your print newsletter
• any other “mailing” that you send to your clients on a semi-regular basis.

If you’ve got more than one kind of newsletter, that’s ok – at only £75/$121 per newsletter, these are a steal!  One of our clients, Julie Gibbons, who is Vice President of Marketing at Peoplemaps.com, had this to say about the check-in we did with their first email newsletter recently:

A BIG thanks to Andy who is not only wise, but generous with it – and *really* knows his stuff. His tips for improving our email newsletter were simple, straightforward, and easy for us to understand and implement. Marketing genius!

This is a bit of an experiment as we don’t normally off this service on a larger scale, so I can’t say we’ll continue it beyond February.  So if sounds like the feedback you need, don’t wait.

Ready to STOP Annoying Your Customers? Then click here to contact us with your details and we’ll get started!

Photo by 10ch