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Permission Based Email Marketing Case Study

November 29, 2008

Tags: Array, Best Practices, Bonus, Case Study, Daily Basis, Email List, Email Marketing, Few Days, Guru, Impro, Information Sign, Insight, Insights, Marketer, Marketers, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Marketing Strategy, mindset, Optin, Optin Email Marketing, Permission, Permission Based Email, Permission Based Email Marketing, Permission Email Marketing, Perspective, Purple Cow, Seth Godin, Special Something, Urge, Verbiage
Posted in: Remarkable Marketing

As the marketing fanatic that I am, I dissect blogs and websites on a daily basis and keep an eye on how I would improve upon them as a marketer.  Within the last few days I have been looking at permission based email marketing strategies to improve my own list-building efforts.

I thought I’d share some valuable insight on permission email marketing here and engage you in the conversation of email marketing best practices .

When I am scouring the web and stumble across good blogs and websites, I look at it from the perspective of a consumer who wants something special…something that is rare and unique…

If you’re familiar with Seth Godin, marketing guru, you’ll know that he’s passionate about teaching marketers how to transform their businesses by being remarkable.  If you’ve read his "Purple Cow " book you know what I mean.  Let’s see which of the following three email marketing strategies wins the "Purple Cow" award.

I’ve selected three examples from the web to dissect the verbiage.  Let’s see which optin form creates the most urge to subscribe in a reader.  Let’s get into the customers’ mindset here and get to dissecting…

Example #1

The following example comes from a blog and was inline text (a form directly stationary on a site).

Valuable FREE Information

Sign up for my Regular "Insights" and get over $100 in INSTANT Bonuses!

In this example we have no idea what we are going to really get.  The First sentence "Valuable Free Information" does nothing to entice a person to optin.  There is neither any indication of perceived value here nor any indication of what types of emails the person opting in would receive.

Also, who cares about receiving "insights."  This is plain boring.  The $100 Instant Bonus sounds nice, but this verbiage is not compelling enough for me to opt in.

The "submit" field above "improve my results" sounds good, but what kind of results is this email marketer referring to?

The only good thing I see here is that the person mentions the subscribers email will never be sold or used by anyone else.

This optin email marketing strategy is a "no go."

This example was a "pop up" email and automatically turned on the "oh no" look on Dali (lol).  Just the subject line "I would like you to do so as well."  A prospect would not care about what the email marketer wants them to do unless the site owner established the value in the prospect taking action.

It would be much better to have a headline quickly peaking the subscriber’s interest and then establishing some value - explain why the person should opt in.  This email marketer could have done that in the bullet points, but unless the headline really appeals to the potential client, I don’t see anyone opting in here.

How about you?

Example #3

The following was also a pop up optin form:

"Email List Name" - A Different Kind of Email List

Get the email newsletter that isn’t an email newsletter. ______ is more like getting short emails from your friends .  2 or 3 times a week, I have cool links and short bits of behind-the-scenes advice on _________, _____________-, ____________. Basically, it’s great stuff you’ll never see on the blog.

Subscribe now and get a 38-minute audio download of _____________ !

And yes, I will sell you stuff from time to time (what did you think, LOL). If you’re not comfortable with that, don’t sign up.

Sign up now:

Email:

Your address will never be shared or sold. You will only see this message once.

Right from the beginning of this optin form the email marketer speaks directly to the prospect who is tired of the likes of the optin forms discussed above.  This person already says "hey there, this is ‘a different kind of email list."

This form also tells the subscriber exactly what they can anticipate.   The email marketer also mentions the information is "behind the scenes information" that cannot be accessed on the site.  This invokes a sense of loss and desire to get information that is scarce and "secret."  This pushes some buttons.

Additionally, there is a pretty cool free gift - an audio tutorial of "38 minutes."  This number "38" sparks curiosity and also is not the run of the mill free e-book or "free tips" free gift lure you normally see in op tin forms.

The email marketer even puts some personality and humor into the form by being straightforward that the person will receive sales offers from time to time "what did you think."

I actually opted into this email list right away.

This one definitely wins the "Purple Cow" award.  Whaddya say?

Any other pointers out there on optin/permission based email marketing?

Looking forward to hearing your feedback!

Your Partner in Online Marketing Success,

Dali Burgado

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