The first thing you need to do when creating an effective email campaign is get a handle on your own email. It will help you quiet your mind so that you can focus on your own business. There's been a lot of really great stuff written about handling email by Merlin Mann. If you don't know his work, hop on over to the Original Inbox Zero Articles. Based on Merlin's articles and also David Allen's Getting Things Done system.
I use the following process to keep my email under control:
- Once or twice an hour I check my email to see if there is anything urgent, or anything that I can reply to within two minutes of hitting the reply button.
- I reply to the things that need less than two minutes of time.
- I delete the things that don't need or won't get more attention. For example: newsletters I'm subscribed to, emails I'm cc-d on, system notifications ("you just bought something at Amazon, we'll ship it later") and spam.
- Things that I want to read in more detail later are saved to a topic folder.
- Things that have a task associated with them get copied to a folder labelled TODO.
- At least once a day I go through my TODO folder and choose tasks to complete so that I can remove the emails from that folder (after replying to them where relevant).
- At the end of the day all emails that are currently in the inbox get moved to the TODO folder.
Easy, right? Now that you've got your email under control it's time to fill up someone else's inbox with your message.
The easiest way to get in touch with someone is through personal correspondence. Y'know: sending one email to one person. It's not very efficient as a mass marketing tool, but it does give you the practice you'll need to compose effective emails. Not sure what to say? Take Andrea Nierenberg's lead and start by saying thank you to your customers. Get yourself into the habit of writing emails that aren't about you, they're about your customer.
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If your business is ready to start taking advantage of email communications register for Effective Email Campaigns. This two-week course starting September 28th will give you the "howto" you'll need to use email to attract new and repeat customers to your business. Space is limited so register now for Email Campaigns and Newsletters.
