Original post by TAMSIN FOX-DAVIES via constantcontact
As British business owners, we often struggle to put ourselves and our businesses ‘out there’.
It’s true that manners are important, but the classic British reserve can get in the way of marketing our businesses in the most effective way, and email marketing is no exception.
Here are the top 5 mistakes I see British businesses make with their email newsletters (and what you can do about each of them):
1. Not asking for the sign-up
In order to get sign-ups for your mailing list, you have to ask people to join it, and a ‘join my mailing list’ box or button is not going to cut it.
What you need to do is to ask people to join your list wherever and whenever you connect with them, offline (e.g. meetings, phone calls) and online (e.g. every page of your website, on your social profiles).
That doesn’t mean you need to be pushy. Simply tell them what is in your newsletter that they would find valuable and ask them if they’d like to receive it. They can always say ‘no’ and that’s okay too.
2. Forgetting to include a call to action
The whole point of marketing is to elicit a physical and measurable response from your audience, i.e. you need to get people to DO something as a result of your email. However, people won’t take the action that you want them to take unless you ask them to do it.
The key is to spell out clearly what you want them to do. This applies whether you are asking them to buy from you right now, or you want them to do something else (like read an article, attend an event, or call you to set up a meeting).
Rev!Up your Marketing to accelerate your Startup! #TMURevUp
