So often when we are setting up or autoresponder messages we’re so focused on what we are saying that we forget how important it is to keep the message personal to our readers. We end up putting out what I call “public address” messages.
Sure, if you’ve set it up correctly, the subscriber gets a message that starts off with a personal greeting but then it trails off into a message intended for anybody that happens to be reading it. They lose the feeling that it was written for them at all. Instead, they find themselves bumping through it because(hopefully)they respect you as a source of information and feel like they “should” read it because it might be important.
How much have you ever gotten from an article or email you felt like you “had to” read? You’ll scan through the message quickly to get it over with and then move on to another project. If asked later what it was about you would be sketchy at best.
Contrast this with an email you get where you are kindly greeted and spoken to as if you were the only one in mind when it was written. You can recall many more details about the email later because it was written “for you.”
We all know that sometimes you simply need to get across information to all of your readership and trying to over-personalize can detract from the message you are sending. You simply want everybody to hear the same information. In cases like this(changes to business practices, away notices, etc.)it is acceptable to let the message speak for itself.
I recently sent out a broadcast message from my Aweber account where I thanked my readers for their business, emails and praise in 2007 and wished them continued success in 2008. I made a special effort to not make overly global statements that people would not feel applied to them. In other words, I didn’t list a whole bunch of things trying to catch every possible reader. I simply listed the three items above(business, emails, praise)in my email that I though almost all of them would feel pertained to them.
Do you know what happened? I had probably 20 times the reply rate I normally do. That’s right-people responding to my email as if I took the time to write them personally and they felt like they owed me a reply.
Keep in mind, my previous emails were “public address” messages and little more. I would tell them they needed to check something out or get something before it was gone or whatever. I rarely got anybody that responded to the email because they didn’t feel it asked for one.
So, the next time you go to send out a broadcast or set up an email course, try to take a good look at the people you’ll be sending it to and see if you can’t make them feel like they’re a part of something more than autoresponder lists.
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