Email Marketing: How to address your subscribers

Today I wanted to touch one of the most important point about Email Marketing with you. You may actually be surprised... but this important point actually applies to writing a blog like I'm doing right here, right now in my Snap! Websites journal.

First and foremost, I noticed a trend in the last two years of people saying that when building your list of subscribers you shouldn't ask for the user's name. Apparently, some people noticed that they were getting more subscriptions to their marketing lists by just and only asking the users to enter their email address.

My personal (and I insist on that term: personal) feeling is that such marketers are missing the point. Either that, or they are building a list of subscribers that they only want to keep for a very short time (possibly a good thing for MLM, as those marketing an MLM product generally expect a very quick Yes I'll Do It answer.)

However, to better personalize your emails, you want to address your subscribers using their name, possibly just their first name1. You must keep in mind that you are dealing with real people. Imagine that you were talking to your best friend. You probably would put greetings at the beginning of your emails: Hi %firstname% or Dear %firstname%. Do the same with your subscribers. Especially, never address them as "Hey my dear subscribers, ...". That's totally non-personal. They won't feel like you're directly talking to them, individually.

For those of you who have worked with printed letters, this is the exact same principal. Nothing new! (Remember when you had to make that Microsoft document work with your database of prospects? Sorry... I digress )

Note that it starts with the greetings, but the entire email has to be written as if you were talking with one single person. Just like in this blog post, I'm talking to you, just YOU. Not the 100, 1,000, 5,000 readers of this post. Because in the end, I want you to personally learn something.

Do you have any question about Internet Marketing that you'd like me to help you with? Don't hesitate to post a comment below with your questions!