Scott Kirsner from The Boston Globe posted a video interview on his blog today with Gail Goodman, CEO of Constant Contact. We’re really big fans of Gail here at HubSpot. She is, as we say in Boston, “wicked smart” and an exceptional entrepreneur (ConstantContact went public last year). HubSpot is fortunate enough to have Gail on our board of directors.
Oh, and by the way, Gail knows a thing or two about email marketing. ConstantContact has over 200,000 customers.
But, you’re probably not here to hear me gush about Gail. On to the quick tips.
Quick Tips From An Email Marketing Maven
1. It’s all about relevance. Be interesting. Don’t be self-serving.
2. Keep it short and sweet so people read it immediately. “I’ll get to it later” is the kiss of death.
3. Don’t revert to your “formal” voice when writing. You’ve got a personality, show it.
4. Put a teaser in the email, and a link back to your website. Engage them there.
5. Links in the email are great because they’re trackable. You can figure out what’s working.
6. Once a month is about the right level of frequency for most small businesses.
7. Two things that get your email opened: #1: “From” and #2 “Subject”.
8. Most important: Be Empathetic! If you “listen between the lines” in the video, you’ll see several times where Gail suggests asking yourself “how would you react?”
All things considered, we’d rather you focus on inbound marketing. But, if you’re spending some energy on email marketing, you might as well do it well and get your messages read.
