This was the reply I got from one of our ‘online only’ subscribers last month when I wrote an email announcing the arrival of my beautiful new daughter Daisy.
It got me asking myself “Does she really not know who I am?” – The reason I found it odd that she didn’t know who I was is because of the sheer amount of automated email contact I have had with her over the past 6 months…
This particular woman willingly entered our database 6 months ago when she requested the online version of our report ‘getting more repeat business and referrals”.
Now for those of you who have requested our report, you’ll know that our email follow-up sequence is quite frequent, there are 24 emails in the first 60 days, plus there are weekly blog/article emails and 2 ezines per month. I checked our systems and over 6 months she was sent 65 emails from us. So I would have thought at the very least she would know me as ‘the guy who sends all the emails’.
At further investigation, she had opened 7 out of those 65 emails, which is a 10.7% open-rate. Although 10.7% is a low open-rate for us, I’ve heard the number 11% thrown around as an average open rate to commercial email, so I’m assuming this woman is a pretty typical representation of someone receiving email marketing.
This experience just further confirms what Zac and I have been saying all along.
“Email ONLY does NOT build relationships” – In fact in this case it doesn’t even build recognition!
Because we know this, we make a point of getting people onto our hard-copy newsletter database. When people request our free report, they enter their name and email to receive the ‘online version’, we then automatically direct them to another webform to collect their mailing details for their hard-copy too. About 85% of people give us their mailing details, but there is that 15% who are left to be communicated by email only…
If we can’t get recognition with 65 emails over 6 months, what luck does the business sending a monthly ezine only have? Or even worse a business that doesn’t communicate at all?
In order to really succeed we have to communicate with multi-media. We communicate by email, mail and phone to create recognition, familiarity and to build a relationship. I can call virtually anyone who has been receiving our hard-copy newsletter for 6 months and they WILL know who I am because in that 6 months they not only receive the 65 emails, they receive 6 newsletters, 2 post cards, 2 letters and 2 phone calls.
If you would like to discover how to build recognition using print alongside your email, give us a call on 1300 120 106 and lets talk.