Your email address is valuable virtual real estate, and brands want to get their hands on it. But they sometimes forget that there is a very real and busy human behind that email address. You want entertaining stories, tips that help you run your business, and even want to buy products or services when they’re appropriate. But you want to feel like a human in the process. It’s time for us to humanize our marketing. In this blog, you’ll learn three ways to make sure you’re doing that when you send emails to your list.
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Get email consent
Every time I get added to someone’s email list without my permission, I get pissed. It doesn’t make me feel valued; it makes me feel like capital.
If you don’t have someone’s explicit permission, don’t send them email marketing. It’s that simple.
I thought everyone knew that by now.
But every few weeks, I get a new email from some list I didn’t sign up for.
A while back, SEO guy Neil Patel talked about how there’s software to help you capture the emails of people who visit your website. He acknowledged that people hate this technique, though. So, I say, why do it?
I mean this in the nicest way possible: What does it say about you and your emails that you feel like you have to trick people into reading them?
As heart-led entrepreneurs, do we want to force people into a closer relationship? Or do we want to attract them to get more intimate with us? Whoa there, get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about emails here, dude!
A little email foreplay
Here are a few ways to make sure you’re not making your new date uncomfortable and that you’re always getting consent to take it to the next step.
A. Tease with irresistible social content before your “email date”
If your followers appreciate your social media content, they will probably want to deepen their relationship with you by signing up for your emails. Think about how you can offer something slightly different than what you share on social media.
B. Offer deeper connection through exclusive email content
What a deeper connection looks like is up to you. Maybe you do a deeper dive into a specific part of a larger topic you covered on social media. Or, you record a longform video that you link to in the email body and keep it unlisted so it’s just for subscribers.
Maybe your emails are where you share deeper dives into your expertise, stuff that really helps your audience. Make sure you’re tailoring your content to your audience and you’re marketing to the humans you serve.
C. Entice people to sign up by offering a gift in return
Design a free resource or guide that gives people a quick win. For example, since I specialize in content repurposing, I designed a freebie called Learn 15 easy ways to repurpose your blog posts, YouTube videos, and emails to get more life out of your content. Make sure the resource you offer will attract the kind of people you’d actually like to have on your email list.
Speaking of repurposing, this blog about how to repurpose your existing content into lead magnets or resources to entice people to sign up for your emails could be useful as you’re creating your own.
Other simple ways to keep email list-building human
Remember, we’re humanizing our marketing, so now let’s get back to ethically building your email list so you don’t upset people. Here are a few more ways to do that.
D. Ask for permission: “Are you ready for my emails?”
This almost seems too simple, right? What if you just mention your emails to clients, on coffee chats with, or at networking events? Create a boilerplate description of what your emails offer (think 1-2 sentences) and see if they’re interested. This is a straightforward way to get people to sign up for your list and not be confused about why they’re suddenly getting emails from you.
E. Create landing pages or forms where they can sign up themselves.
Mention your email list on other platforms like social media or Pinterest, in your email footer, or your website copy. Then, create a simple landing page to make it easy for them to sign up.
F. Be clear about your intentions-no surprises
Make sure that it’s clear when people sign up for your freebie that they will also be receiving your emails. Add a sentence or two describing the topics you write about. If you can share the usual frequency with which you send emails, that’s great, too.
What’s the point of focusing on the human who owns the email address?
Don’t you want people on your list who really want to be there? Otherwise, you’ll just be clogging it up with unengaged people who won’t open your emails anyway.
It doesn’t make sense to shove yourself down their throat if they’re going to bring your open rate down, report your emails as spam, or never buy your products or services because they hate you. Don’t make yourself undatable.
Want help writing emails your subscribers look forward to reading? In a 90-minute Content Clarity Session, we’ll sort through your ideas, write email content together, and make sure it will speak to the humans reading it.
I’m curious: Have you been signed up for any email newsletters lately without your express permission? Comment below and let me know about the most heinous transgressors!
2. Email merge tags AKA I HAVE A NAME, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
We have all these tools at our fingertips to personalize our emails. Whether it’s adding subscribers’ names or segmenting our lists so that only specific people get certain campaigns, it’s all possible.
I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve opened lately where my name is nowhere in sight. And I would totally accept this if these lists didn’t use personalization. But, where my name should be, there’s just a space and a comma or the dreaded merge code: “FNAME.”
For the uninitiated, that code is used to automatically include the email subscriber’s first name wherever you want it to go in the email.
That is, if the list owner has added your name in the first place. Or if they’ve set everything up correctly.
Look, if you’re going to go to the trouble of adding someone’s email address to your list manually, why not take the extra 5 seconds to add their name?
When you’re really trying to get me to feel something…and then it says, “Remember the first time you failed, FNAME?” it totally takes me out of the story. Because I don’t want to feel like just one of many on your list. I want to feel SPECIAL.
So, when you’re manually adding a subscriber’s details, please be conscientious enough to add their name. Names humanize. FNAME does not.
3. Consider people sharing their email addresses with you as a huge gift and act accordingly.
As Sue Moore says about email marketing, “Be useful, not relentless.” People are busy; they don’t want to be bombarded with emails. Instead, they are grateful when your emails share a new perspective, something that affects their quality of life, or feature a product or service that is well-suited to their needs.
They want you to make it clear how something could help them, but they don’t need you to hit them over the head with it.
When it comes to sending emails to your list, do you plan to incorporate any of these tips to humanize your marketing? It’s time to treat your subscribers like the humans they are, and that starts with showing them you value them at every stage of the journey. I hope these tips to humanize your marketing help you create a deeper relationship with your subscribers. Ultimately, it’s about showing them that you write about stuff they’re interested in and that they can trust you.
