You’re two weeks into the Social Media workout designed to save you time, make you more savvy and increase your business profile. If you’re still with me then congratulations. If you’ve gotten a little behind then make sure you check out how to get Facebook fit and set up a Fan Page for your business. Just by following my own exercises I’ve seen over 50 new fans to my WomanzWorld page- thanks.
You’ve toned up with Twitter and learned the rules of engagement and practical uses for business. I know there’s still some skeptics out there, so if there’s one exercise you keep in your workout routine it’s to use search.twitter.com to listen to what your customers are saying and provide the answer.
Today we’re looking at exercising your email rights. Both from managing your inbox to email marketing.
Inbox Workout
At the start of this month I was determined to exercise control of my email. Thanks to a timely email (ironic I know) from Leo Babuta of Zen Habits, I decided to follow his exact instructions and so far the results have been dramatic.
If your inbox is drowning with emails, both read and unread and that stresses you out then read on:
Exercise 1: Create an “actions” folder
This is where you’re going to store any emails that you need to take action on and are really important.
Exercise 2. Pick the most important.
Go through your entire inbox and check off 10-15 that are the most urgent action emails, and file them in this new folder.
Exercise 3. Temporarily archive.
Create a “temp” folder. File everything that’s still in your inbox into this temp folder. Everything. You’re going to get these out of the way and not worry about them at the moment.
Exercise 4. Set a new policy.
Every new email that comes in will follow the rules in the next section. No more allowing your inbox to pile up.
Exercise 5: Unsubscribe
I went through my inbox and unsubscribed from about 20 emails newsletters, you know the ones that come in you and instantly delete anyway. For the ones I like I switched to an RSS feed in Google Reader. The ones I really like I kept and put a filter to go straight into a `To Read’ folder. Bliss.
Exercise 6: Exercise Control
Check your email only 2-3 times per day and NEVER in the morning. I know it’s damn hard but get your biggest piece of work out of the way in the first hour and do not get sucked in to checking email. When you’re online try to work in 20-30 minute chunks so delete unimportant emails, file others into action or temporary archive and when you reply keep it brief. 1-2 sentences should suffice – otherwise pick up the phone.
Creating Business Email Newsletters
Now you have better control of your own inbox, you have likely seen what works to catch your attention from newsletters and what doesn’t. What you like to hear from businesses and what turns you off.
Exercise 1: Get an Email Client
Most of the tools you can use to send out email newsletters to your clients offer similar features: pre-existing templates and ones you can customise, importing and manging your list of customers, automatic sign up and unsubscribe settings, auto responders, and tracking of email open rates and reach.
I really like MailChimp for their funky branding, easy to use templates and fantastic helpful videos. It’s also free to use if you send under 500 per month. Two other big names are Aweber & Constant Contact All of them have similar features. It’s entirely your preference.
Exercise 2: Find your purpose
What do you want to achieve with your email newsletters? Is it to inform of a new product or service? Is it to share information that’s helpful to your customers? Examples of this is white papers, Slideshare presentations, free reports, discounts and invites to events.
Exercise 3: Make it timely
Most companies stick with one newsletter update per month. If you have regular offerings such as a day spa, retail firm or event company then perhaps one per week is better.
The best times to send email totally depend on your business. 10am- midday and 2-5pm have been proven more effective. Tuesdays work better than Mondays as people have settled into their work week. Friday afternoons too as people knock off from work.
Interestingly 9-11pm has also been proven as the time many people read their emails. So pick your audience and know your preferences. Split your campaigns and test it out!
Exercise 4: Brand it
Whilst you can change your newsletter look and feel make sure you keep some elements consistent with your branding. Your logo, fonts, and social media links are really important to include. Make it easy to share with social bookmark buttons. Include testimonials and latest PR where possible. Visuals are great but make sure images are not disrupting your readers as many email clients do not display them.
Exercise 5: Be friendly
Formal emails I think are on the out. Even professional businesses take a friendly inviting tone, with clear information and entertaining content. Make sure your email has benefits for your customers, a call to action and your contact details should they wish for more information.
Top Tip: MailChimp offers great short videos and information on ways to make your email campaigns more effective so take the time to watch them and learn, and then test test test – and have fun!
Exercise 6: Deal with deserters
Yes you will have people unsubscribe from your email list, I personally have been lucky as you generally enjoy what I write and have to say! However of the few who have unsubscribed I always follow up to ask if they can give me feedback on why, what would make them come back and what else they’d like to see. If you ask you quite often get great responses that help you to improve for next time.
Top Tip: Know the difference
Subscribing by RSS (the orange icon on the right hand side bar) means you can subscribe to receive my blog posts direct to your email inbox or Google Reader (where you read them online).
By subscribing to my newsletter you’ll get these once every month or when I have something very special to say. These are generally more targeted and have special information, offers or updates.
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by the way…great ideas in your artcile about action folders etc….another nice idea I used for a while and some of my clients find really helpful is one I picked up from someone i did some work for a while ago…he suggested creating a folder called “halfway to the bin” for all that stuff you’d like to chuck out but not totally sure you can actually painlessly throw out…and then you could set an auto delete function for everything in that folder that is 3 months old for example…so you put stuff there….and if you haven’t needed it for 3 months it probably means you can chuck it safely.
Oh and another great question to ask is: what is the worst thing that could happen if I throw this out? There is a wonderful book by a business owner called ricardo Semmler who describes how they sold $35000 worth of filing cabinets in the mid eighties when they closed the company for an afternoon and the whole workforce went through all of their document storages and rigorously asked themselves the question: what is the worst thing that can happen if we chuck this… Most of the time, the document (email) is accessible elsewhere, you have it double up or triple or quadruple, or it isn’t actually all that important or you can recreate it at the touch of a button…
Myself I use my delete and autoarchive system in outlook.
I have my delete box set to “autoarchive on 3 months” and autoarchiving sends deleted files after 3 months into my backup archive…and it clears out after another 6 months… so when I chuck something I can actually still access it for 9 months…that is safe enough for me.
Oh and don’t forget…all those emails that go to and fro between you and someone…every time the email is sent it sends the whole thread of the conversation …so you only need to keep the last email and you can usually chuck every email with the same subject to the same person…
cheers
roland hanekroot
http://www.newperspectives.com.au
Thank you for a great article. It helps to be reminded occasionally of who is in charge… me, or the email? I have a “later gator” file for those emails that do not need immediate attention or that do need saved, but for a ltd. time (such as online order receipts, etc.). Another tip on email? Just turn it off! There’s nothing mere irritating for me than to get sucked into email when I meant to visit briefly.
Appreciate the article!
Theresa Bradley-Banta
Hi Theresa
Great point, turning it off is definitely one sure fire tactic to focus on getting more important tasks done! I also think going in with a mindset of `I will deal with my emails in a 30 minute time slot’ tends to make you work more effectively and smartly to get through them. Otherwise I think we all have a tendency to just let the inbox consume us all day.
I like that people have systems and tactics that work for them and are sharing them with us.
Natalie
Very interesting blog post thank you for sharing I have added your blog to my bookmarks and will be back
By the way this is off subject but I really like your web page layout.