How to Get Your Letters Read

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Email marketing is one of the best ways to get the word out about your product to potential customers. It’s cheap, efficient, and versatile. But from the recipients’ perspective, it can also be annoying, impersonal and invasive. For this reason, overcoming readers’ initial antipathy is essential to the email marketer. You need to persuade your audience that your letter is worth their time, and that you are offering them more than just a barrage of untargeted junk mail.

And targeting is what separates junk mail from profitable advertising. How many times have unsolicited mailers asked you to apply for a mail-order diploma, a $25,000 jackpot, or a home video library? Broad-based campaigns tend to be a waste of a company’s resources, because they are so obviously untargeted that the most readers also find them to be untrustworthy. The secret to selling is to develop a rapport - and if your prospect thinks that he or she is just another name on your mailing list, you won’t even get your foot in the door.

It’s also important to look professional, since spam will always be undeleted unread. Addresses that are garbled or nonsensical suggest that your company is a fly-by-night operation, or that it is continually being forced off its server - so you should obviously avoid addresses like d345f2ds@domain.com, or fsf3445a@someplace.net. Generic addresses like friend@domain.com, aren’t really much better, and might even cause some recipients to assume that your message is a virus!

As much as possible, try to make recipients feel that the message is addressed only to them. Clearly, it’s not cost-effective to write individual email message to every potential client, particularly if your company caters to thousands of individual end users. What you can do is break down your clientele into target groups. For instance, if your company offers three kinds of widgets, write three letters - one for each widget - and then send it to people who you think might have a specific interest in that product, perhaps because they have bought a similar widget from you in the past.

This tells the customer that you are aware of his or her needs, and that you care about meeting them. In the sometimes anonymous world of online commerce, this personal connection is what will allow you to edge out the competition - and to develop a loyal customer base.