The average attention span of an adult today is between 7–12 seconds which puts the pressure on us to captivate and hook our audience from the get-go. The question is, how do we do that in email marketing? The answer is one word, Personalization. The favourite subject of every single person on earth is themselves. You can’t blame anyone because we live our entire lives through our eyes so it makes sense that we’re likely to root for ourselves to do well. I’ve received so many emails that I close within 3 seconds of opening just to get rid of the notification. I’ve received some terrible pitches such as this one below.
There are so many things wrong with this email.
- It’s obvious that he’s using the exact same message for all emails.
- His evidence is “trust me bro” — no review, landing page, website, case study, testimonial, etc.
- Bad grammar throughout.
- He didn’t even research on his target demographic — I didn’t need a website. (he used Fiverr to get my mail in a tricky yet funny way)
- His email is structured poorly.
We all have dream business ideas that we wish could take off to the point of earning millions. You aren’t going to gain anyone’s trust with emails like this. The survival of every business depends on sales, and in the modern climate, increasing sales requires having a strong digital presence. In 2017, E-commerce accounted for $2.3 trillion in global sales, and that number is expected to increase to $4.88 trillion by 2021. If you want your business to get a piece of those sales, then it’s critical to have a strong email marketing strategy.
The main reason for this blog post is to talk about personalized first line writing for cold email campaigns. This is something I do for many clients and I’m looking to build a team under me to form the best first line writing agency.
More often than not the beginning of friendships starts when two people can relate to or share a similar opinion/experience. I found it easy to become friends with anyone who attended the same high school as I did even if we never spoke. There’s something about sharing an experience that draws us closer.
This is why you can’t just showcase your services like an insurance salesman. That’s why good copywriters follow the AIDA rule. (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). You need to grab your target’s attention first and foremost and the best way to do that is with a personalized compliment. You can’t just walk up to a random girl and say “come home with me baby”. Your first interaction should be a genuine compliment, that will convince her to bring down her walls. Same for email marketing, a genuine unique compliment that can only be sent to the target in question dramatically increases the chances of your mail being read.
Lead Generation
Now we have to take a step back and talk about target markets and lead generation. You can’t just send emails to anyone with your pitch. You need to send it to a group of people who actually need your services. As a website designer, you can’t send emails to people/companies who have modern looking websites. They’ll ignore your email. You’ll have to research for sites that look outdated and offer the owners a solution. That is more likely to get you solid contracts.
How to Generate leads
Many programs that can help with generating leads but all of them are for sale. You may use LinkedIn but it’ll take a long time and your account could be suspended for looking through too many profiles. My suggestion for all business owners is to use a paid lead generation software or pay a professional freelancer on Fiverr or Upwork to generate leads for you. When this is done, you’ll receive a list of names, emails, websites and LinkedIn profile links. The latter is the go-to point for quality personalized first lines.
Here is an example of me using a personalized first line the right way.
I kept it simple and made him aware of what I do plus I left my Upwork link for proof. Without that ice-breaker, he probably wouldn’t have replied to me. Click here to read some staggering stats in favour of personalized emails. All that is used is an excel sheet or google doc with the emails, websites, and LinkedIn links for your target leads. I do the rest with such information.
Conclusion
This post is directed at 2 kinds people
- People with online businesses are looking for ways to market on a cheap without spending too many dollars on ads. It’s better to present your product or service personally to your customer. Contact me on ricdesignsltd@gmail.com and let’s team-up.
- People who are looking for a side gig as a first-line writer. I can only go so far on my own so I’ll need a team to build the biggest first-line writing agency in the world.
Thanks for making it this far. Click here for my YouTube video on this subject.
Originally published at http://midasthoughts.com on June 7, 2021.
