What often holds me back from sending out emails to my interest list is that I’m afraid my emails aren’t good enough. I forget that when you are in genuine and sharing stories (like I did last week in this post), it’s really going to be ok.
But I do agonize over what to say and I get paralyzed by my own analysis.
Can you relate?
The reality is that we are are completely overthinking things. It’s just an email folks.
Yes, some people will be deeply disturbed by our messages and unsubscribe from our lists because they are in an “unsubscribe kind of mood“.
I get that and I’ve been there. Then I often realize I unsubscribed from someone with a high level of integrity and honesty.
So I go back and opt back in, and save my “unsubscribe moments” for email marketers who seem to try to sell us something with every automated message that was scripted years ago.
The reality is good people like you and me sometimes send email messages with errors in them.
We are humans after all.
And we are using email marketing software that was well… designed by humans.
So it’s been known to do weird things too even when we test out the message before sending it out.
The key is to know how to response gracefully when errors do occur.
3 Email Marketing Tips When Things Go Wrong
1. Be Timely
When you send out an email that has an error in it like a broken link, be timely with your response. If you notice it (or someone on your list tells you), craft a follow-up message as soon as you can.
My client Martina Wing is a passionate manta ray advocate in Hawaii. She is in the process of migrating her email list from AWeber to ConvertKit with my project help.
We are using a really cool marine life coloring book lead magnet as an incentive for her existing list to “opt back in” (you’ll discover more about Martina’s journey in upcoming posts).
The other day, the wrong version of a message was sent to over 2000 people.
Within an hour, Martina crafted a follow-up message with the graceful introduction:
Oops! Accidents happen. Please accept my apology. Here is the correct message for your response…
2. Be Authentic
When errors occur (or plans change), take ownership. Don’t blame someone or the email server for something simple that goes wrong.
Let the miscommunication be an opportunity to show authenticity and humor.
My client Darcy Eikenberg offers career coaching services and products through her business Red Cape Revolution. She is offering a free video training series this month to help professionals make their make career decision of 2017 (you can check it out here).
When she realized the early bird savings she promised on her upcoming course was communicated for the wrong week, she took ownership of it and then offered to increase the savings!
3. Be Careful
When you discover an error in your email message to your list, you’ll also want to be careful with the follow up message.
What I mean is don’t be in such a rush to send out another broadcast that you forget to send yourself a copy of the new message first and test the links.
I will confess, as a Certified PMP, I am really particular about testing when it comes to software. I put it on schedules for my own projects and for client projects using Teamwork software from Ireland.
That being said, testing is still required even if it is not in your project plan.
If you send a follow-up message with the same or another error, your window for being timely and authentic has closed.
Don’t send a third message.
Otherwise, members of your list will then be in a truly “unsubscribe kind of mood“!
Hope this blog post helps,
Brent
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