The Biggest Mistake Everyone In Targeted Email Marketing Makes

Targeted email marketing — the art of capturing email addresses with a squeeze page and then sending those addresses marketing emails later on — is an amazing tool. Unfortunately, it’s one that most people manage to screw up pretty badly.

What do they do to fail? Simple — they go for the throat too quickly. If you have an autoresponder (the primary tool for targeted email marketing) and you’re putting a sales pitch out there in the first email — or even the first four or five — you’re going to end up causing mass unsubscriptions.

Now, this might not apply if you’re an internet marketing guru and your list is made up of other internet marketers — they expect to be sold to. But if you’re selling kiln-dried firewood and you’ve set up your autoresponder as a “seven-part series on the benefits burning of different kinds of wood”…well, your list is expecting information, not a sales pitch — and they’ll be pissed if they get sold.

The correct tactic for 99% of targeted email marketing is exactly the same tactic you want to use if you’re blog posting: display your passion, display your expertise, and only occasionally push a product.

If you’re a firewood seller, you want to start with what you told you’d give them — seven emails that explain why you might want to burn white birch over pine, for example. Then, in the last Email of the series, explain that you’ll keep sending them useful firewood-related information.

Your eighth Email can totally be a sell. Just package it with something really interesting about your subject, like pictures of cordwood masonry homes. Something that will pique their interest, get them to stop reading on autopilot and start thinking. That way, when they see your sales pitch, they won’t just skip over it like we’ve all been trained to do by spam and people who use targeted email marketing badly.

Using these tips will not only keep more people on your list longer, but it will improve your conversion rate when you do blast a pitch. That’s how to use targeted email marketing correctly.