About half of the companies which I’ve heard from this year that sell by email have told me that they are having a tough time of it.

The other half said that they were very happy with their response rates.

I’ve been trying to work out how it is that some companies are doing particularly well with emails while others are not.

I found four significant points, and these are outlined in the report below, and I hope you find them interesting. If anything is not clear please do give me a call on 01536 399 000, or else email me at Tony@hamilton-house.com

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First, not all email lists are equal. It is possible to buy email addresses for around half a penny per address, and basically as the price goes down, so does the quality. Regularly researched and updated lists cost a lot more – but it is worth checking who you are dealing with and what sort of written guarantees you are going to get.

Second, the way the email is written is hugely important – perhaps it is the most important factor of all. Many of the firms that are failing to get good sales out of emails are, in my opinion, using styles and approaches that are wholly inappropriate when writing to the people they are addressing, and this makes a huge difference. (If you would like to look into this issue, just forward me a piece you have produced, and I will call you back with my thoughts. No charge, no obligation).

Generally speaking I think many people see the bulk of spam emails that come through to them and then simply copy that style. It doesn’t work like that.

Third, the email should be primarily text. People look at emails in different ways – and almost certainly don’t look at the email initially on a full screen. They just see a part of the email – maybe next to the list of incoming emails.

So you need to make sure that they see something that makes sense and makes them want to read on. Lots of illustrations simply don’t work, because they take too long for the brain to log into. By that time the itchy finger hovering over “delete” has hit the key and your message has gone without even being properly looked at.

You need a solid clear headline which can be seen at once and which raises the interest of the reader. Without that the email fails.

Finally – but nevertheless very importantly – email works not just as a way of getting new customers, it is also great as a way of keeping present customers happy.

This means that as well as emailing all potential customers you should take all the people who have purchased from you of late, and email them every week or two, with new offers, new ideas, new concepts, new thoughts.

The key thing here is that you can’t just have a “discount of the week” or write “NEW!” all over the email. You have to be communicating in a way that makes the reader think, “This is written for me, by someone who understands my thoughts, my outlook, my needs, my vision of the world. Even if there is nothing here this week that I want, I’ll read their next email because there’s generally something here for me.”

In other words the email is a communication mechanism as much as a way of selling – and it needs to be used in both ways.

As it happens we are feeling rather buoyant at this end about email because we just got our highest ever open rate on an email of 54.7% with a click through rate of 39.8%. So (at least this week) I am feeling that we are getting this right.

This is of course just a general introduction – if you would like to take this further do…

· Phone my colleagues and myself on 01536 399 000

· Email Tony@hamilton-house.com