Email is such a great direct channel to the people we want (and need) to reach for our businesses to be successful. Unfortunately, most people simply use email the way it comes out of the box and wonder why they have little success.
What they are missing are tools (most free), and strategies to take the guessing out of the game and know exactly how to win at email marketing. I have seen similar posts from other growth and marketing individuals, but continue to see a very small adoption of these practices. My goal is to continue to spread the word and hopefully put it in a format that most people can adopt.
Finding your contacts email:
If you don’t have the correct contact you are in trouble, there is no point in sending your message to the gatekeeper aka info@company.com. We must find the direct address of the person we are looking for. There are 3 ways that will work with 80% success
- The original: Start by simply searching Google, try; “Person name + email” – “Persons Name + @companyemail.com”. Often works but not for top-level executives;
- The quantified guess: If you don’t have a reparative, stop reading this and get it now! (Google why do you not just buy them now? update- LinkedIn did and kind of ruined it); Reparative (Free) is a tool that matches any correct email in the “to” field and displays the person’s information online; Social information, location, updates, and more. Now, since most professional emails use these four formats; Daniel@company.com – Daniel.Sosa@company.com – dsosa@company.com – danielsosa@company.com; all we need is a name and the @company.com syntax. You will be mind-blown by the success of this strategy.
- The Social Mistake: We think we live in a world where things just disappear, so you will be surprised how often an individual will tweet their email in a conversation. Simply find the person’s Twitter handle (This is always public), scroll deep through their Twitter feed, command-S, and search for the word “email”. Want to take it to the next step? Use www.allmytweets.net to search every tweet they ever wrote. Yes “All My Tweets” exist for this purpose… it is pretty awesome.
- Update: Try Sales loft (www.Saleslofts.com) a tool for pulling contact emails from LinkedIn. Really amazing, kind of pricey, but has a good free trial.
Be fast and analytical:
Lots of great options, but I use Yesware.com. They are good to me and active with communication when I need them so I will stick to them. Yes, ware is a Gmail plugin that does so much! Tells you if and when someone opened your email, allows you to create templates that you can use of email in just 2 clicks, schedule emails, and analyze the open/response rate of each template. In other words, these guys are the foundation to being an email rock star. You are now sending emails fast, testing the success of different templates, and tracking what offers the best open and response results.
Engaging and continuing the conversation:
We have the right contacts, the right emails to send, and the tools to track that. Now we must follow up and right to make sure we get the conversation. Followup. cc (free) lets you create a follow-up reminder right from the use of email so you can follow up strategically and never forget. Even better you can use Boomeranggmail.com to set automate your follow-up and simply shut it off if a conversation starts (Update: Yes ware added this feature). Tip: Make your follow-ups smart and relevant. We now know who has opened our emails; follow-up should be very different than to those who may still not know who we are.…