Virtual Assistance and You

If you use the web for business, you surely know that building your opt-in list and sending email newsletters is the heart of your marketing.  For some time now, focusing on recruiting subscribers and increasing your inner circle fan club has been regarded as best practice if you want to grow your biz.

But, also for some time now,  the spam filters have been wise to email marketing software, summarily dumping many a well-meaning post. And, though you have ten on your list, who’s to say eight of them are not deadbeats who may open your post but never read it? Email client software that shows the top part of each email when you click on it in the list will report that the email was opened. But there’s no way to know if it was actually read.

The fact is, if one-third of your recipients open your email newsletter, you’re doing extraordinarily well. And if 20 percent click on your links, you might be on a terrific roll. Most stats are far below these levels.

Now, email marketing can be done very inexpensively, so we may as well keep doing it. But since we’re doing it, we should figure out how to do it better.

We want to be more effective, more compelling, closer to our clients than we are.  Yet email marketing, to be meaningful, has to have an enormous top of the funnel. The more people you’re mailing to, the more people are likely to actually read your messages. So you have to appeal to a wide base, while creeping closer to intimacy. It can be tricky.

But however we might frame things, in practical terms email marketing is perhaps terminally threatened by spam filters and pervasive ADD. So the question is, what can work better in its place?

The concept of the landing page, perhaps, begins to fill the bill; or micro-sites, as described in this article. In both these cases, the standard would be to send a short, plain text email, with a link to the online page.

Why is this better? While reserving the right to – eventually –  judge it not better, after all,  I might suggest that with such a system, you’re efficiently capturing those people who are most interested in your product. You’re not missing those whose spam filters would hide your html email; or those who have no time to read a lengthy post.

The subsequent online page, the link you provide in the text of your email, may include sub-pages, interactive elements, and other tools. It will contribute to your search engine optimization, and remain indefinitely in your website cache.

It’s a strong contender for html email replacement, IMO. What’s your take? Or are you successful enough with emailed newsletters, and not looking for alternatives? Sure would like to hear your comments.