Things seem to be OK in LinkedIn land after the hacking incident I wrote about the other day.
And blow me down if LinkedIn support gave me one of the best customer service experiences I’ve had for a while. Not what I expected from one of the big social platforms.
Even more so considering I’m not paying them a cent (although they suck value from me in the other usual ways “free” platforms do).
But kudos to them for making my life easier on this front.
And that leads us on to today’s email.
Which is about emails “experts” doing just the opposite to the LinkedIn support team…
And making our lives harder.
So I just read a second email in as many days about the “types of emails we should be sending”.
Not sure if they are coincidental or what. But it made this topic stand out.
And true to form… I got to disagreeing with them pretty quickly. I’ll go into that in a moment.
First up I’ll say…
There was nothing surprising about the types of emails they suggest to send:
- Nurture: The regular newsletter type of email. With “valuable” content and more relationship-building. Where you act like best buds, while keeping sales on the down low. So subscribers trust you when it comes to buying in the next type of email…
Sales: Focused on selling a particular product.
Automated: For guiding subscribers to take certain actions. Like how to use your product after they buy. Or guiding them when they sign up for your emails. So this includes onboarding (welcome) email sequences.
Re-engagement emails: For segments of your list that are… well… not engaged. The “we haven’t seen you open an email in a while” type of email is a common one.
Ask any AI and you’ll get similar lists. Terms may differ. But the purpose behind the type of email remains the same.
At first glance, it’s reasonable to think that defining categories of emails like this would simplify things for business owners. And would help them understand how to write better emails. Because each email is more focused on doing a particular job.
I disagree. Heartily.
Specifically, when we’re talking about day-to-day email marketing.
In my experience, categorising them like this makes email marketing MORE complex.
Here’s why:
Writing good emails becomes harder because you have to think about things like, “How often should I send a nurture email?”. Or “How do I know when someone should get a re-engagement email?”
When (or even if) a decision is made about these things… the next phase is producing email campaign calendars with pretty colour-coding for various email types.
Yeah… I may be poking the bear here… but the point is:
This extra complexity opens the door to a whole lot of planning and procrastinating happening. Without a single email being sent. (Analysis paralysis anyone?)
I abandoned thoughts of taking this approach to email a long time ago. In fact, when I started writing daily emails, I never even bothered.
Partially because I have a lazy streak. Partially because I crave simplicity. (Although, I can also architect much complexity in my business if I don’t rein myself in 😆)
That’s not to say I don’t have a basic promotional calendar or automated emails. And my automated emails DO have a particular purpose. Such as helping my customers access something like my Playbook after they buy it.
But for my regular campaign emails… the nurture, sales, and re-engagement is woven into each one.
Take today’s email as an example.
This email nurtures. Because nurture is about relationships. Notice that I’m writing this email as one person to another. I opened by sharing what’s been going on in my world, and share my experiences and thoughts. So you get to know me a little better. And sharing from my experience doubles as the “valuable content”.
I’ve put energy into writing about a topic that can potentially save my subscribers time and frustration. Through that, you gain a little more insight into what’s important to me — that I care about my subscribers being able to make the most of this sometimes mysterious thing called “email”.
This email is also a sales email. But it’s not only selling. Selling is just one component of this email, and flows out of what I’m sharing. It’s there for the person who is ready to say “yes”. And for a prospective customer to learn a little more about what they may in fact be needing. And what I can offer them to help.
This email is also a re-engagement email. On multiple levels.
It re-engages the regular reader. Who is once again happy to have read this one. And will then look forward to the next.
It re-engages the customer who has bought the product. But has not yet started or finished learning from it or putting it into practice. They get another reminder of why it was a good decision to buy it (re-selling them). And may feel a little nudge: “That’s right, I need to look at that soon.”
And for the reader who looks like they’ve stopped reading but who still on my email list…
My emails continuing to arrive in their inbox show I’ve not given up on them.
Other email marketers would have already booted them off their list because they haven’t opened their emails for 3 months.
Haven’t they heard that open tracking is dead?
Those subscribers may very well be reading my emails. But open tracking is lying because of their privacy settings (or other reasons we can’t delve into here).
Maybe they aren’t reading. And my emails are simply stacking up in a folder. But one day a crunch will come. That day they will decide they’ve not read these and aren’t going to, so they’ll unsubscribe. (This way your list organically cleans itself — one less thing for a busy business owner to do 😁).
Or they’ll see the sheer volume of emails from me. Notice some intriguing subject lines. And wonder if it isn’t something worth checking out. (The principle you can take to the bank is: sheer patience has made many a customer.)
The more email you send, the more clear-cut that decision to stay or go becomes.
And on that note… we’ve arrived at the sales portion of this email.
Because the amount of emails we send directly impacts subscriber engagement. And the speed at which you can build relationships. And see consistent sales.
But those emails have to be interesting enough that your ideal subscribers want to read them.
