The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

This time more answers to "Your insights and advice about designing newsletters are based on studying more than 1400 Email newsletters, and then just 200 of those in depth.

What kind of patterns emerged?"

Things that worked and things that didn't -- this is literally a two-edged sword. I will never be able to emphasize enough that knowing your market, your audience is key to success in any marketing. Let me give you an example.

I just started a newsletter for several reasons and I used our research to help me figure out what to do. Evidently a standard for email blast subscription response is about 10%. I did three email blasts and got almost 90% buy-in simply because I designed my introductory email along certain principles.

First, it was very much a "Joseph" email. People who've read my other writings, talked with me, seen me present or listened to a podcast could quickly and easily recognize my tone, my voice, my language. In other words, I made it as One-to-One as possible. This is a significant factor in getting people to respond.

Psychologically, people will respond to a person, to a personal request, far more often and far more rapidly than anything else. Now, I don't know lots of the people on my subscriber list and most of them know me. I can still make it personal even to those people I don't know personally by (essentially) demonstrating that "person" they are responding to. This is easy to do with a little training and listeners can contact NextStage if they're interested.

So anyway, I knew my audience and MORE IMPORTANTLY I knew what they expected and gave it to them.

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Links for this post:

• How to Design an E-Mail Newsletter to Maximize Your ROI: Part 1
• How to Design an E-Mail Newsletter to Maximize Your ROI: Part 2
• Email Newsletters, Anyone?
• Make sure your email newsletter is working
• SEND Glands Blog arc

• Know How Someone Is Thinking in 10 Seconds or Less Half-day training at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 13 June 08

• New Communications Forum 2008, 22-25 April 08 at The Vineyard Creek Inn & Spa, Sonoma County CA
• San Francisco Emetrics Marketing Optimzation Summit, 4-7 May 08
• SUNY Marketing Professionals Conference at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 11-13 June 08

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