Leveraging the 'power of four' to ensure responses to your email campaigns !

There are so many emails hitting your target customer's email box on a daily basis. Add to this the fact that most of the emails would be read/filtered using Blackberries. How do you make sure that your email gets read in this crowded INBOX. 


Here are four  things that you need to pay special attention to 
1) Subject lines - cannot be sales offers, cannot sound like promotions. Keep your subject line short, but compulsive for the person to read. An effective way may be to use references of other persons that the recipent works with or is friends with. An example could be "Re : Conversation with Bob", where Bob might be his boss at work. There are many ways to find out co-workers, thanks to social networking


2) Reference - If your subject lines are strong and thoughtful, you have successfully navigated the first step and your email has been opened. you have to incentivize the person to read through and that is your next challenge.  Build on what you used while framing the subject,build a strong reference case. Of course you cannot fake it, and you have to be genuine. An example could be " I spoke with Bob Fisher's office and was told that you would be the person responsible to discuss about improving profitability options for your company"


3) Content - Make it personal - If your target customer has gone through the first two parts, most likely he would read through the rest of the content as well. Make sure that it is short and never more than 1 or 2 paras at the most. Don't beat around the bush, make the offer relevant for the person that you are trying to reach. Answer the"Whats in it for me" syndrome. Also try and make it as personal as possible. Use customer name as often as possible in your content. 


4) Precise Next Action - Once you have gone this far, define very clearly what you want the next action to be. Offer times for a follow-up discussion rather than keeping it open to next week/next month. There should be enough in your content to fetch you a response. Just as the role of a CV is to get you a job interview, the role of effective content in point 3 above is to get you to the defined next action. 


Let me know your thoughts/feedback. 
Happy selling

Regards
Atul 

http://www.xenia-consulting.com/

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