Day Five : Are Your Messages Serving Your Customers?

We started to audit our auto-responder messages yesterday by reworking the welcome email. Now it’s time to tackle the rest of them. If you followed my advice of signing up for your own list with a separate email account, you can edit and work through them as they hit your inbox. Another option is to open them and edit them one at a time as time permits in your auto-responder dashboard. Either options works, just make sure it gets done sooner rather than later.

Today we going to look at each of those messages from the point of view of our subscribers and customers. You want to look at both the content and the offers you are presenting them with. Let’s run through some questions you may want to ask yourself as you read through each of the email messages.

First though, spend a few minutes defining your target audience and your ideal subscriber. The more you know about this person, the easier it will become to edit these messages and craft new ones going forward. Picture your ideal customer and subscriber as a fictional character. Be as detailed and clear as possible. This will be the person you’re writing to as you work on all your email marketing.

Does The Subject Line Grab Their Attention?

Start by examining the subject line of each messages. It’s what determines whether or not your subscribers open your email. It can be helpful to look at the stats in you auto-responder software to find out what emails have high open rates and which ones don’t. Rework the subject lines of underperformers and see if you can’t find a way to grab your readers’ attention.

Are You Serving Them With The Content You’re Sharing?

Next, take a look at the content you’re sharing in your emails as well as the content you’re pointing them to in your messages. Maybe you’re linking to a blog post or a video. Examine each piece of content and ask yourself if it serves your audience. Are you helping your readers? Are you answering their questions, addressing their concerns, or entertaining them? Keep your ideal subscriber in mind as you work through the content. If something doesn’t serve them, take it out of the auto-responder sequence or edit and change as needed.

Remember, you’re building a relationship here and you have to earn your subscribers’ trust before they will become an integral part of your customer base and your online business.

Do The Order Of Messages Make Sense?

As you are working your way through your auto-responder messages, it’s also a good idea to review the order of your messages. Is it making sense and is it presenting your readers with information, tips and offers in progressive order that makes sense? You don’t want to present the solution to a problem you haven’t discussed with them yet for example.

Review the order and timing of your auto-responder emails and tweak it as needed. You’ll be surprised how much difference a simple switch in emails can make when it comes to open rates, and sales from your product recommendations.

What Do They Need or Need To Know Next?

Another way to look at this as you’re editing your a/r sequence is to ask yourself what else your readers need and what they need to know next. Not only does this help with the order of messages, asking yourself this question continuously will also help you to come up with more and more messages to add to your auto-responder. That’s something you want to continue doing going forward. In fact, now is the perfect time to put that on the calendar to make sure it happens.

Is This The Best Product To Recommend?

Last but not least, let’s talk about monetizing your list. Yes, you want to make offers and start earning a nice little income from your list. At the same time though, you should also have your subscribers’ best interest in mind. Are the products you’re recommending worth the money? Are they a good fit for your readers? Don’t make offers for offers sake. Make offers because you know this is something that will provide value to your audience.

Go through the messages one at a time and improve what you can. Don’t be afraid to delete entire emails if they don’t serve your customers and subscribers and replace them with something else. Quality always trumps quantity here and you should be protective of your readers. Nothing kills a list faster than hitting them up with a bunch of crappy offers to make a quick buck. You’re in this for the long run and that means taking care of your people and your tribe.