What not to do with telemarketing at the first call

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How to start a Follow-up Marketing campaign with Telemarketing and gain zero customers.

Hi everyone, I'll introduce the discussion simply by saying that the aim of the follow-up, following an initial approach phone call, should be to initially set up an appointment with the interlocutor to delve deeper into the topic of the appointment itself with the prospect.

This is in theory, since practice now clearly shows that there is no longer the possibility of speaking directly on the phone with a purchasing manager or a manager of the specific sector, who is potentially interested in your product, since now all companies, from the largest to the smallest, tend to request an email presentation of your represented company in advance.

Nonetheless, you will still want to take note of the errors contained in this review, precisely because you may have to request an appointment, even after the introductory phase via e-mail has been successful, and in which such errors could potentially be made.

The initial phone call, obviously different in content from the one that follows a positive outcome of your e-mail message, should aim to set up an appointment, so it should aim to give a positive and concise message on the subject matter will go and discuss during the appointment.

Before creating a script for the phone calls you will have to make, I want to give you a list of the formulas most used by salespeople to make a bad impression on their prospects, customers, etc., and completely destroy any follow-up strategy from the moment of first telephone contact.

These are formulas with which it is very easy to get a refusal.

As I present these formulas to you, I ask you to pay attention to the sensations you feel, so as to immediately let the things you shouldn't do into yourself.

Ultimately it is a list of things to avoid and never do.

I remind you of the three main rules of communication, particularly in telephone communication and in sales.

The first thing to check is to understand what the potential customer is interested in, because he always wonders what is useful and interesting for him.

The second rule is that your prospects or customers like to buy, but don't like being tried to sell them something.

The third rule says that when the customer buys something he doesn't buy for your reasons, but for his reasons.

Let's say that within these phone call examples, which I will present to you, you will find the classic three errors that trample on these three rules.

In just a few seconds your customer will answer the phone.

I remind you that in the first 10 seconds you decide whether the call can continue, or if it is in the dying phase, therefore if you are dying in the call.

However, it is important that you know that the failure of the phone call is always predictable, because it is a direct consequence of what you say.

And here are some scenarios of what happens in customer calls.

When you read these phone call vignettes that are all different from each other, think about how they make you feel and what sensations they create in you, write them down and connect them to the type of phone call you are about to examine.

Then in the first half of the lesson we will talk about how to renovate the entire electrical system of your home and what precautions to keep in mind, what costs we will incur, and all the technical and operational details of the electrical system.

Instead, in the second half of the lesson we will see how easy it is to get another week of vacation, already paid for, in the Cayman Islands.

And you may be wondering, what is this talking about?

When I told you about the first part referring to the electrical system, you immediately thought that these things don't interest you, you don't need to know these things, they are not part of your interests, all this you are listening to doesn't interest you.

It happened differently when I started talking about free holidays, and your thoughts changed immediately, you must have thought and asked yourself, so what is it all about?

Oh yes, this interests me, and therefore I managed to attract your attention.

Then remember that in the first ten seconds of the call you can create emotions, like the one I have just described, or you can also generate boredom and therefore rejection of your commercial proposal.

So what's your purpose?

Why do you have to concentrate on understanding what your main purpose is?

Your fundamental aim is to completely avoid producing in the mind of your interlocutor the sensations that are created in the examples you will read and then do everything to implement an opening of the call so that it creates attention and interest, and above all to first you must eliminate the negative sensations that you yourself experience from your way of expressing yourself and you must create positive sensations.

First of all, know that to do all this you must always smile on the phone and you must not be driving a car, lying on a bed, or too comfortable in an armchair, because your interlocutor immediately senses your negative nature. , or not mentally ready.

Instead, you must sit on a normal chair, with your back straight and therefore alert and attentive to everything that happens, to what they tell you and to what you have to say.

So let's start by checking the words that evoke resistance from the prospect or customer, when opening the phone call, and which I absolutely recommend you avoid.

Know that I also made these mistakes, before learning how to make phone calls of a certain type.

From the examples you will read shortly, you will find some types of phone calls, affected by various types of errors.

Let's start.

Let's start from the first.

Mr. Rossi, I'm just calling to see if I could ask you some questions.

Let's see together what's wrong with this type of opening, this type of call.

Think about it for a moment.

In this sentence, if you look carefully you have to eliminate the word only, because it diminishes the action you are declaring and that you wanted to do and therefore you give very little importance to the person of your customer.

As a result you are also belittling your person.

I'll give you another slightly different example because it doesn't have to do with sales, to make sure you realize the type of error.

Suppose that one Sunday a family of friends comes to your house and this family is made up of dad, mom and children.

The moment he enters your house, happy that you welcomed him, the father tells you that they were just passing by and so they thought of stopping.

He imagines what feeling this situation creates in you, and it's the exact same situation as before.

Mr. Rossi I was just calling to see if I could ask you some questions!

With this approach you devalue the moment in which you are calling, that is, by saying this sentence, you devalue yourself and the people you are calling. Is the concept clear to you?

So never use the word only, or only, because with such words you devalue the actions you should perform.

And you decrease your customer's esteem.

And here we are at the second one.

Mr Bianchi, I wanted to introduce myself to your company for etcetera, etcetera.

Think for a moment about the concept you convey in this sentence: you are conveying a concept about yourself that takes it for granted that the customer is there for your reasons.

Feel what sensation this concept creates in you, if you have felt it, and if you haven't felt it, I'll explain it to you now.

First of all, you are the person who offers to sell and I want to remind you that you are not a person who has nothing to do, that is, you are not the person who leaves by car to visit a stranger, you are not going to a party, so you must always remember that you are going to your potential customer.

So always remember that when you talk to him, he always asks himself what's in it for him?

And in fact potential customers think of themselves, they don't think of you, they don't care about you, nothing, I repeat, nothing.

This sentence ultimately makes no sense, no meaning, and only wastes your client's and yourself's time.

So never let the customer understand that I have nothing to do today, and then I thought that I would like to introduce myself to his company.

Write down the emotion this type of approach creates in you.

And let's move on to the third presentation.

Remember well that when I started making cold calls, if I also had this information that I am giving you, I would have become an expert in much less time, and yet I am also here to always improve myself, and you who listen to me.

Here is the sentence from the third example and be careful of the sensations it creates in you.

Mr. Verdi, I am part of a company that provides cleaning and washing services for premises and I wanted to talk to you about the needs that we could solve for his company.

Put yourself on the other side of the fence for a moment, and imagine what response you could immediately give to this salesman who presents himself in this way, show me how you manage to surprise him with your response.

Have you found the answer?

If you haven't found it, here it is: in response to your request, people can express themselves in this way: we already have a provider of these services, or we are completely satisfied with the provider we use at the moment.

What did you provoke with this presentation?

When you present a product or service, these ways of presenting incite resistance very easily and then you will get the answers you have already heard before, like we don't need these things, we are completely satisfied with what we use, right now .

If, however, you want to continue along this path, and carry forward this type of openness in telephone calls, then you have to talk to customers not about products and services, but about results, only about results, because when you talk about results that have really been obtained, possibly equipped with a credible testimonial, these are much more difficult to scratch, and customer resistance decreases immediately.

Therefore it is clear that you have to talk about results that you can demonstrate otherwise you will find yourself in worse situations than a resistance on the telephone.

So if you want to start your call with an opening like this, study all the results that your products create, and then concretely demonstrate what you can achieve in terms of the results you offer.

And we are at point 4.

Mr. Rossi, as you know, we are the main supplier of sweets in the shopping center just a stone's throw from you.

Well, now put yourself in the customer's shoes and feel what feeling this phrase causes you, I'll repeat it.

Mr Rossi, as you know, we are the main supplier of sweets in the shopping center just a stone's throw from you.

If you understand and have a feeling then you have realized that the word as she will know actually clashes with your speech.

When I hear this phrase like you will know, I immediately start thinking about the reasons why I shouldn't know, or the reasons why I should know.

It makes you wonder spontaneously if there is something I missed?

Or should I really know?

One immediately wonders what is it that I should know that I don't know?

This situation creates an emotion of anxiety in the client's head and thus you light the fire of resistance and will only create resistance towards you.

So eliminate this very bad way of ports.

We have reached the fifth.

Even this way of presenting oneself is no less negative.

Feel a little of the sensation it creates in you, and when I tell you feel the emotion, please put yourself in the state of feeling and embracing this emotion, so that you truly realize what your words can create towards of your potential customers.

Here's the sentence: Mr. Rossi, I'm sure you would agree!

Have you felt the emotion it could provoke in your interlocutor?

This sentence takes one thing for granted, and that is that the customer must necessarily agree with you, right from the start to get into the merits of the discussion, and therefore a claim that is neither in heaven nor on earth.

An approach sufficient to stop your phone call and have the customer tell me to call me back in ten years, when he has learned to communicate.

But then ask yourself, why would the customer agree?

Who are you to assume how people might think and furthermore the very word agree implies that they will absolutely disagree.

Try to check if you have never said a sentence like this to one of your customers and you will certainly remember, if it happened, whether or not your customer really agreed.

It would be great for you to try out these openings and realize how your customers behave so that you can get hands-on experience.

And we're at the sixth.

This is a little softer, it uses the conditional and puts the cart before the horse, saying: Mr. Verdi, I would like to present you with a system that always allows you to be in the top positions of Google, with the name of your company.

Do you always feel your heart, what sensation did you feel, if you felt a sensation?

When opening a call, never say this phrase, because you are simply asking a person to commit and make an instant decision!

In this case you are asking for something that you don't know whether he knows or not, and in what particular way he knows it, without even giving any details, taking it for granted that he must know it and accept it.

Put yourself in the customer's shoes and as a customer you will ask yourself what does this want, which challenges me in a certain sense to decide on the spot to give me an appointment, even if I can say no, or for something I don't know , but why should I accept his challenge?

I tell him I don't care and I solved the problem.

You have to imagine the feeling that goes through your client in that moment, that is, what you would feel if someone told you if you could show them a way to be in the top positions of Google, with the name of their company.

Furthermore, you put the customer in the position of having to decide and take responsibility for responding to you without having thought about it enough, without the time necessary to focus on your request and against his/her every will.

We are on the seventh opening formula to use to make sure you don't have an appointment.

Mr. Bianchi, are you the person in charge of... or... good morning!

Mr Bianchi, I'm Sergio Traversa from Soluzione Software srl, are you the person who makes decisions regarding your management software?

Never do these rides, you will disqualify yourself immediately.

Do you remember one of the times when you went into a shop looking for something and initially you find yourself alone and you look at everything you like and what you don't like and you imagine how nice it could be to have what you like and you think about it , but then the whole spell is broken, a person comes along and says can I help you?

Now I ask you to remember the feeling that that person created in that moment, and it certainly wasn't pleasant, above all, you must have thought here he is ready to sell me something.

Because as I told you before, people like to buy, but they don't like when you want to sell them something.

A presentation like I can help you is the same as before, that is, like the phrase, you are the person in charge of purchasing the management software...

It announces your sales intentions, immediately triggering and provoking opposition and resistance from customers, and it is natural for them to defend themselves.

So the first thing to do to avoid such a mistake is to qualify yourself and then to briefly and concisely introduce, especially if you don't have the right interlocutor in front of you, the advantages you offer, before trying to sell or before expressing your intentions of wanting to sell

And here we are at number 8.

Here is a technique that, like electric current, makes you feel an immediate shock of rejection, immediately creating resistance and hostility towards you.

Mr. Rossi, can you help me?

Used with decision makers, this is a truly terrible and horrible technique.

This question immediately creates resistance.

Think of an example of a telephone approach: put yourself in the shoes of the potential customer who perhaps finds himself in the typical situation of being interrupted in what he is doing and probably wasn't even waiting for a phone call.

The seller: good morning Mr. Rossi, I'm Antonio Bianchi from business services, can you help me?

What might the customer think to himself?

I ask you to feel the objection within yourself, and what sensation such a question can give.

The customer wonders, but who is this person, what does he want from me, you will probably see that he will be a salesman.

The customer asks what she needs to help her?

The seller replies, I was wondering if you are the person responsible for the management software.

Yes I am!

But let's analyze what happened, namely that the seller first of all wasted the customer's time, arousing suspicion in his mind and the more time passes the more the relationship is destroyed.

In fact, it made the customer think about this phrase, that is, who is this person and what does he want, and you will probably see that he will be a salesman, then confirming the customer's thought that he had already identified him before he showed up .

What you need to know in your approach, however, is that the customer does not have the task of helping you, he has no obligation towards you, if anything you should be the one to be able to help your customer.

Well up to this point I hope I have conveyed the concept that any communication you have to make on the phone you must first feel it inside yourself in order to listen to what sensation it gives you and how it makes you feel.

And only after having examined it and made sure that the sensations you experience are positive, then you can start using it.

And here we are at the ninth presentation.

Never apologize for wanting to help them!

In fact, when you apologize at the beginning of a call, you immediately lose importance and esteem from the potential customer.

Feel the sensations that come to you, feel what you feel, what you feel and what you say to yourself, here's an example: let's suppose you open the call by saying, good morning Mr. Rossi, I know you're busy right now and I'm sorry for interrupting you.

That's why I'm calling her...

Think for a moment about what you are about to offer your customers, think about the value you offer your customers, think about the sensations that being able to offer real value to your customer creates.

You are proposing something of value that can help make the customer's life better, but if you haven't sold your importance, if you haven't sold your time, then it's like declaring out loud to the customer, be careful, I'm selling goods. shoddy that has no value, and I advise you not to buy it.

Nowadays everyone is busy, everyone has things to do, it seems that the world runs at supersonic speed and that people don't even have time to live, given how much they have to do!

So if what you have to offer is truly valuable and you demonstrate that you want to win their time, then customers will want to talk to you and want to know more, they will want to see you and talk about their interests.

And now we are at the tenth of the spectacular questions to never ask.

Thanks for answering my call!

When the seller thanks the customer because he was able to talk together, this diminishes his importance and prestige as a seller.

Assuming he had any beforehand.

Such a phrase creates sensations in the sense that it diminishes your importance in the buyer's mind and gives the feeling that you are wasting your customer's time, so you talk and waste words and time.

To say the least this is a horrendous way to present yourself.

It's quite similar to the previous example of when the salesperson apologizes for wasting your time.

There are very few cases in life where saying thank you doesn't make the situation better and I'm sure this is one of those few cases.

When a salesperson thanks you for answering the call it makes you feel as if the salesperson is not worthy of talking to the customer.

What immediate consequences can this presentation create?

Think about it and collect your ideas.

And here we are at the eleventh.

Try to imagine asking your customer for a cold decision, right away, immediately, please imagine the feeling it creates in this type of call.

Imagine a different story like we are in a bar and a man approaches a woman he doesn't know, starting an argument and asking will you marry me?

How do you think a man who makes such a proposal to you might be seen by a woman, or what might that woman think?

This is going to be a poor fool.

Here are some real-life examples of phone calls that imply an immediate decision from the customer: the salesman asks, for example, Mr. Rossi, I would like to speak with you to start a collaborative relationship.

Put yourself in the customer's shoes and imagine what feeling this approach creates in you.

And here's another one: I'm Andrea Farina and I'd like to talk to you about becoming one of your stationery suppliers.

Put yourself in the customer's shoes and imagine what feeling it causes you.

I'll let you listen to another one: Mr. Customer, I'm Andrea Gnocchi and I would like to talk about how to develop a commercial relationship with his company.

Feel what situation this question creates for you.

And here's the next one: I'm Giorgio Ferri and we have excellent products for industrial cleaning.

And I would like to discuss it with you.

Would you be okay with Thursday at 3pm?

What are the sensations that came out of you?

All these requests made by telephone pursue a final result that is different from the result that you want to obtain with a phone call.

In fact, the object of the phone call is to sell the appointment, not to try to convince the interlocutor about the quality of your product already during the phone call.

One must realize that such a request is too early compared to the time of the call and is made in a ridiculous way.

Why too ridiculous?

Because you asked the customer for a decision too quickly.

An opening of this kind requires that you have conquered your ground, that is, before you can ask this type of question you must and I repeat must conquer the right to ask it, you cannot shamelessly ask your client anything, especially asking to take a first-time decision.

You can only win the right in this way, arousing curiosity about what you are about to propose and quickly communicating value for your customer.

Only in this way can you ask questions that are similar to the previous one.

And here we are at the twelfth.

Listen to this one and tell me if you don't feel a certain feeling of unease towards the seller.

Good morning Mr. Rossi, I'm calling people in his area and I was reading the old cards I had in my drawer, and I found his name...

This is absolutely no way to make the customer feel completely special!

In fact, in this case you make the customer feel like an ordinary person, an ordinary person, in short, an ordinary person, an anonymous person.

The people you call do not want to be treated like one of the many, who are part of the names on your list, and who you are listening to at that moment.

People, on the other hand, want to feel as if they are the only person in the world you are calling and do not like being part of a mass of names taken from a list.

So make sure he feels treated as unique.

The same happens when you send a single message to a large number of recipients.

In fact, you will have considerable chances of success for your message if it has been personalized with the email address and name of each individual recipient.

Otherwise you will get a total failure if, using a program, such as, for example, Microsoft Outlook, you enter all the recipients' addresses in the To: field, and at the same time there is no trace of the recipients' names in the subject or in the body of the message itself, provoking the right reaction of every single recipient, of having been treated like any recipient and not like a special customer, as he would like to be understood.

And we're at the thirteenth.

She and I have never spoken together!

It's an obvious situation!

This presentation is a waste of words!

This is a sales call with which you give the feeling of trying to make fun of the interlocutor.

It's as if the salesperson is saying ok I know I have no shots to fire and you're probably preparing to resist my call, while I just wanted to connect with you.

Ultimately it could also be right but what does it mean for the listener?

We are at the fourteenth.

I thought I'd give you a call to see how things are going, or I'll call to see if you received the email or the vacation package brochure.

These are all situations that evoke the feeling that you are wasting time on things of secondary importance, generating in the customer, here too, the feeling that you want to make fun of him.

E-mail history

It's always important to understand the history of something to understand why it's important!

Today I will talk about how email marketing has evolved and what the outcome of the challenge has been between offline marketing communications and those sent via direct emails to the consumer or between companies.

Remember the days of marketing through your snail mailbox?

Take a minute and take a stroll down to your regular inbox.

No, I don't mean going to your computer to check your email inbox.

I mean a walk to your actual physical mailbox where people mail you paper letters and packages.

Now collect and put in order the mail you will find there.

You are likely to find several promotional or marketing flyers that are trying to sell you localized services.

However, you may also find catalogs and promotional postcards for global brands.

Consider for a moment what the world would be like if mail in your physical inbox was the only way to send you personalized communications to market products and services.

It would be a highly inefficient system.

In fact, postal items must be printed in bulk to reduce costs, and perhaps the message you received is not even personalized with just your name.

Therefore, anyone who wants to advertise you would have to pay not only for the printing of the postcard, flyer or catalog to be sent, but also all the stamps or postage costs for sending the shipment.

Finally, the marketer who sent the mailing should wait a period of time before you receive it.

It may take several weeks for the post office to deliver it, and it may take even longer for you to remove the message from your inbox and read it.

Because of that timing, the offer the marketer was sending you may no longer be as specific and relevant to your interests.

Finally, the marketer would have no way of even knowing if the mailing had an impact on you unless you used a specific promotional code included in the mailing.

There was no way to even know if you had looked at or received your snail mail!

Does this sound like an effective way to market your products or services to a mass consumer audience?

Well, until the 1990s, it was largely the only way to get a marketing communication into the hands of a specific individual.

Marketers came up with many ways to try to make postal marketing mailings more personalized and better track their response rates, but the truth was that once a mailing was sent, figuring out whether it worked or didn't work was more guesswork compared to the real facts.

The entire process was, and is, expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to examine for success.

Luckily for you and your consumer or business-to-business marketing needs, the 1990s arrived and the Internet was born.

Soon after, email began to become the primary personal form of business communication.

Not long after personal email exploded in popularity, email marketing became an area of ​​specialization for those with marketing experience due to its improved ability for personalization, segmentation, frequency, relevance of communications and, most importantly, tracking capabilities.

1991: The “birth” of the Internet

While there are many people who "claim" to be the founders of the Internet, experts say that the Internet as we know it now began in 1991 when CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) publicized a document known as the New World Wide Web Project.

Although it was a British scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, who created it, he actually founded html, http and the very first web pages in the world for CERN already two years before the official document, the publication of which is considered the " birth" of the Internet.

Not only has the Internet changed life as we know it, it has also changed marketing as we know it!

Over the next decade, many experts estimate that the Internet grew by as much as one hundred percent per year in terms of bandwidth used.

The greatest growth peaks were recorded in 1996 and 1997.

Today, of course, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who does not admit that the Internet plays a key role in their daily lives, from gathering information to processing communications, primarily through the use of email and, more recently, social media.

1996: Hotmail becomes the first Web-based email service.

One of the biggest benefits of the creation of the Internet was the ability to use email to communicate with people.

Email was fast, free, and could speed communications around the world in a way that most people had never previously imagined.

However, during the early years of the Internet, email was only available to people who fell into specific groups: college students who used their college-dependent email address, which they were enrolled in, or employees who were able to use company email addresses.

The second group typically had significant limitations on how to use email and who to communicate with.

While some people may also get email services provided by their Internet Service Provider (ISP), those services typically required that you check your email specifically from the computer supported by your ISP.

Email was not a type of communication with which you could respond from anywhere on the globe.

Then, in 1996, Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched what was then called HoTMaiL (with the letters referring to html).

It was the first web-based email system, and suddenly email was available to anyone with access to the Internet.

This didn't just mean people who had home computers connected to the Internet.

It also meant anyone who could use a public computer in a library or shopping mall had the ability to send and receive email.

Suddenly, email was no longer limited to a small group of people who needed to communicate primarily with each other.

Email was out of the box for the public and anyone who wanted to communicate with anyone else could do so through HoTMaiL.

Unsurprisingly, people loved the service and queued up for it.

A year later, in 1997, Microsoft purchased HoTMaiL for four hundred million dollars and renamed it MSN Hotmail.

How many people use email today?

 

Today, Hotmail is still technically a large Web-based email service in terms of end users, according to the most recent data from comScore.

Hotmail is said to have around one billion users.

However, it has been overtaken by Google's Gmail, which has around three billion.

As for Yahoo! its email services rank third with around 800 million reported users.

The birth of email marketing.

While email began as a communication tool for academic and business purposes, it quickly became a tool for personal communications between friends, family, and even people who had never met in real life!

As people began to spend more and more time using email as their primary communication tool, marketers realized that email communications were the future of marketing communications and switched to using of email as a means of communicating effectively with customers.

Email marketing, even in its early days, had a number of advantages over both postal marketing and telesales as a form of direct-to-consumer or business-to-business communication.

We'll look at these benefits in detail in the next section of this book, but today email marketing is a solid part of any comprehensive marketing plan and has entire industries built to help businesses of all sizes effectively market themselves.

SergioTraversa.com would, of course, be an example of what you will find on this site.

SergioTraversa.com works to develop useful email strategies that make it easier to email consumers or business contacts with personalized messages and complete tracking.

In addition to companies that focus mainly on the development of email marketing solutions, online commerce has seen the birth, especially in the 2007-2008 crisis years, of home based businesses, i.e. small companies created by students, the unemployed and housewives , due to the small investments required by the type of business.

Even individuals can therefore become email marketing experts.

Most medium-sized or large companies employ at least one email marketing specialist and can have up to several employees who focus solely on creating effective email marketing strategies and campaigns.

Of course, you may not even need an entire staff, but you need to understand the basics of email marketing strategies, the benefits and tactics of email marketing.

We will cover all these topics in this book to make you an expert in email marketing.

A further in-depth study relating to email marketing is constituted by my Advanced Course on Online Follow-up Marketing, which is essentially based on the use of an autoresponder and your email marketing campaigns relating to your newsletter.

In my Advanced Course on Blog Marketing, in addition to learning how to build a blog, you can learn how to integrate email marketing into a blog through my two courses, which the first is this Advanced Course on E-mail Marketing, and the second is the aforementioned Advanced Course on Follow-up Marketing On Line.

Newsletter and direct sales messages

Summary:

1. Introduction

2 – The fundamental contents of a newsletter

3 – The specific contents of a newsletter

4 – The elements in favor of a newsletter

5 – The elements against a newsletter

6 – The five best strategies for using a newsletter

7 – Direct sales messages

8 – Typical content of a direct sales message

9 – Arguments in favor of direct sales messages

10 – Arguments against direct sales messages

11 – The 5 best strategies for using direct sales messages

12 – Conclusions

1. Introduction

One of the most frequent questions from those who have had their first contact with the world of Email Marketing is whether their email marketing program should take the form and contents of a newsletter or a direct sales campaign, or whether it can take on the form and contents of both types of messages.

Naturally, the most effective email marketing program should contain elements of both strategies.

But, apart from this, we must still try to identify the differences between an email message that is part of a newsletter and a message that has the direct sales function.

Only after this in-depth analysis will you be able to choose which type of form and content you will want to adopt based on the purpose you want to achieve with your e-mail marketing program, as well as based on the target users you will have identified when setting up your email list. departure.

2 – The fundamental contents of a newsletter

First of all, a newsletter is characterized by the desire to offer information that is interesting, useful and engaging, but which belongs to a specific sector, which is subject to rapid technological evolution or to the identification of new and unprecedented contents which are in any case up to date. with the times.

This information is intended to make you known and to create a close relationship between users and your brand.

A newsletter has the characteristic of being able to continuously expose your brand and your products in the minds of your customers, so as to predispose them to always be eager to purchase from you.

It has the function of creating a viral diffusion of the name of your company, your products and your brand itself among your subscribers, by sending interesting information, useful because it is cutting-edge, and engaging.

A newsletter is also a suitable tool for generating traffic visits to your website.

Finally, it can help you acquire sales thanks also to the effective characteristics that your products present and your promotional offers.

3 – The specific contents of a newsletter

While the specific content of a newsletter message can essentially depend on the sector in which you operate, the segment of subscribers to your list who receive that message, your tests on the contents to which recipients react positively, in general the most common features that a newsletter message may present are represented by:

• articles that focus on the most frequent problems in your sector, the expert column;
• columns that focus on specific advice useful for buyers and users of your products;
• the frequently asked questions column;
• the testimonials of your product, not only written and signed, but also on video, resident on your website, but linked in the email;
• reviews of products, features and functions;
• announcements of new products with new features;
• the calendar of the most representative events
• special offers and discounts;
• the comments of the most experts;
• comments from customers and most well-known users;
• links to the websites of commercial partners
• links to sections of your site containing useful product information;
• links to your social media accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn;
• the call to action aimed at forwarding the newsletter to friends.

Obviously, the more creative and unique the content of your newsletter is, the more you will be able to involve subscribers.

What I have provided you represents a list that can immediately give you useful advice regarding the contents that subscribers usually want to read.

4 – The elements in favor of a newsletter

Like any decision regarding your marketing plan, including a newsletter in your marketing mix must also seek to create some balance between the pros and cons of a newsletter.

In this list I present you with some favorable elements, which you will have to take into account when deciding which is the best format for your newsletter to take on for your email marketing campaign.

Providing subscribers with content that is engaging means they will be much more willing to open, read and click through to your newsletter messages rather than a series of direct sales messages.

Your customers really appreciate the fact that not all of your communications have the purpose of inviting them to buy something from you, and this can guarantee you a greater affirmation of your brand in their minds.

Of course, you will also be able to generate sales but not in the same quantity that you could obtain with a series of direct sales messages.

A newsletter is very effective in increasing visits to your website, and this is very important if you have set up a business model based on visits to the site and/or advertising via impressions.

Since a newsletter is not a direct sales tool, you can very well rent or sell space within your messages to your partners, but you will have to do some tests and evaluate the possibility of cancellations, but then it still depends on your line starting editorial, in the sense that if you have set it in a way that excludes the presence of advertising, even from others, you will not be able to suddenly change the setting.

A newsletter message offering an offer at a special price conditional on purchase within a certain time can very well be sent to all subscribers, unlike a sales message, for example a follow-up message, because in the latter case, the message reaches the recipient depending on the moment in which he signs up, and yet in order not to create problems with other subscribers it will always be necessary to maintain a certain discretion.

Naturally, the message with the offer via newsletter will only reach those registered by a certain date and not to subsequent ones.

The length of the message of a newsletter allows you to insert a multiple series of contents, such as sections of your website, and in any case everything that is suitable for spreading your brand and the image of your company.

5 – The elements against a newsletter

Here is a short list of points against using a newsletter:

Precisely because a newsletter will never be able to express itself in a call to action, you will not be able to count on repeated purchases like in direct sales, such as, for example, through a series of follow-up emails.

Creating a newsletter certainly involves a lot of effort, given that it requires the drafting of content comparable to the pages of a site that contains the full version of the articles and columns included in the messages.

Since a newsletter has many sections, it is much more difficult to carry out tests to verify the effectiveness of any content within the body of the message, such as a section header or a particular image.

In short, a newsletter requires a lot of work in its creation compared to what happens for a direct and non-direct sales message it doesn't even get many sales.

However, a newsletter can help you retain customers and ultimately produce sales in the short and long term.

Therefore, when you evaluate the pros and cons of a newsletter, consider that you will have at your disposal the possibility of composing excellent content and at the same time you will also be able to satisfy the need to still obtain a return on the investment in a newsletter.

A newsletter represents the best tool to create the loyalty of your customers and the diffusion program of your brand.

A newsletter can also play a fundamental role in keeping customers loyal to your company, your website and your products.

However, it will always have inferior results in terms of customer acquisition, direct sales and lost customer recovery strategies.

6 – The five best strategies for using a newsletter

I present to you the five best strategies that you should always consider when and plan to use an email newsletter.

Insert a summary of the article in the content of the message, together with a link to the full version of the same. 

This not only increases good traffic visits to your website page, but also prevents your newsletter from being marked as spam, rather than going to the inbox due to the use of words that trigger spam filters.

Make links clear and visible and use text links. 

Make sure all links leading from the message to your website, partner sites, or other locations are clear and visible. 

If possible, set the color to electric blue and underlining for links for easy user recognition.

Although in web design it is considered normal, even if not in use, to use the words "click here" in a link, in email design it is actually rather discouraged because it is considered a spam practice. 

Make sure your links are text-based and not image-based, as those links may not appear in all emails. 

To avoid any risk, make sure that the corresponding text link is also contained under the image link, so that if the recipient's email client deactivates the images, the latter will still be able to understand what to click on.

Prioritize content that users can see in the first 300 vertical pixels so a reader can decide whether or not to read the full email. 

Make sure the most engaging newsletter content appears within these first three hundred pixels and don't waste space with useless graphic headers or useless graphic welcome messages.

Use a “Summary” or “In this email,” since newsletters tend to be longer and users tend to scan them quickly, using a summary or short list of what is in the email makes sure users can quickly refer back to it to see what content they might want to read.

Allow readers the ability to read the newsletter on a web page.

In particular, give users who read their email on their smartphone the option to click on a link to read a version of the newsletter, embedded in a web page, instead of having to read the entire newsletter in the their email inbox, it's a huge plus. 

Offering this option will significantly increase the number of users who explore your newsletter.

Email newsletters are a great way to provide users with your story, resources, and reasons to make purchases or visit your website.

Although the time it takes to create an email newsletter may be long, the benefits you will benefit from will last a long time.

7 – Direct sales messages

Unlike a newsletter a direct sales email aims to increase sales and revenue of your product or service through clicks to your website, so it also aims to increase the click-through rate .

Direct sales emails are best for customer acquisition, revenue generation, and retention.

This also means that tracking the results from that message will be simple, it will either have generated sales… or it will have generated nothing.

Let's say that in reality every e-mail sent within a sales system based on e-mail marketing, which takes the form of a newsletter, or a broadcast, or a follow-up of messages, can give different results, but that the line between having results or not is not so clear.

In fact, there may be messages that sell, or that sell little, or that sell almost nothing.

Split testing is always the only way to verify the type of message that gets the most results.

8 – Typical content of a direct sales message

What is the typical content of a direct sales email?

Sales results may vary based on the specific content or tactic of your direct sales email, but either way, what's appealing about a direct sales message is that its purpose is simple.

The content of a direct sales message is conditioned by the period in which it is sent, the sector the sender belongs to, the target segment to which it is sent and the objectives you want to achieve in terms of sales and turnover.

However, the following contents are typical of direct sales messages and are independent of the previously listed aspects:

• New incentives for the buyer

• Automatic percentage discount or via coupon code

• Free gift given by virtue of the purchase

• Buy one, get one free

• Free shipping

• Free priority or expedited shipping upgrade

• Sending additional product information

• Bonus in cash or points

• Offer of a discounted product due to the intervention of a friend

• Offer a free trial period

• Offering product samples

• Exclusive offers for VIPs

• Seasonal products

• New product announcements

• Product testimonials and reviews

• Product support from authoritative and famous people

9 – Arguments in favor of direct sales messages

Direct sales emails have their own list of advantages and disadvantages to consider when inserting them into your marketing mix. When determining the direct sales email rollout in your email marketing plan, consider the following key points:

Below are the positive points of sending a direct sales email:

• A direct sales email requires less editorial effort than a newsletter, with reduced content and image requirements and typically just a referral link to a page on your website.

• Since a direct sales email has only one call to action, it is easier to segment the user list and present the most appropriate offer.

• The revenue and sales numbers generated will be higher with a direct sales email compared to a content-based newsletter.

• Because a direct sales email has shorter content and only includes a call to action, it is easier to test individual email elements such as headers and images.

10 – Arguments against direct sales messages

Below are the negative points of sending a direct sales email:

• Direct sales emails can often result in much higher spam complaints and unsubscribes than a newsletter.

• Direct sales emails can cause irritation in users, who may very well stop opening your email messages altogether if they begin to perceive that every communication from you is simply a solicitation to purchase something.

• Direct sales emails focus only on a single business, meaning they should not offer the opportunity to promote other sections of your website, partner sites, or other content.

11 – The 5 best strategies for using direct sales messages

Here are the top 5 strategies that should be practiced for direct sales emails:

A call to action: While you can feature multiple products in a direct sales email, don't ask customers who read the email to do anything other than purchase as it will distract them from the intended goal.

Don't clutter your direct sales emails with links to other content, links to additional information about the same products for sale, or even links to social media.

Use equal amounts of text and images: While it's important to use images to showcase your product or generate emotion, always remember that many email clients don't display images.

Always make sure there is an amount of text equal to the amount of space taken up by the images so that users can know what the product offer or feature is without having to load the images into their email browser.

If possible, try to give the html email the appearance of a plain text message, with only the addition of a small company logo at the end of the body of the email, especially if they are messages addressed to entrepreneurs (therefore in the case of B2B sales strategies).

Be careful of spammy words in your text, because direct sales messages run a greater risk of using words that could trigger your email provider's spam filters. For example, words like free, sale, discount or click here can cause your email to go to spam instead of the recipient's inbox.

Make links clear and visible and use text links.

Make sure all links leading from the message to your website, partner sites, or other locations are clear and visible.

If possible, set the color to electric blue and underlining for links for easy user recognition.

Although in web design it is considered normal, even if out of use, to use the words "click here" in a link, in email design it is actually rather discouraged because it is considered a spam practice.

Make sure your links are text-based and not image-based, as those links may not appear in all emails.

To avoid any risk, make sure that the corresponding text link is also contained under the image link, so that if the recipient's email client deactivates the images, the latter will still be able to understand what to click on.

Put the best offer in the subject and immediately under the header, in the body of the message.

Offers can also be for more than one product you would like to sell, so make sure that if you are making multiple offers or promoting multiple products, your best offer is not only first on the list, but is also described in the subject line .

12 – Conclusions

Direct sales emails are a key way to increase revenue, sales and get good traffic to your site and a higher click-through rate.

You can include this setting in any email marketing mix strategy.

Remember to always be balanced when inserting your offers, and therefore when using your messages for direct sales, do not crowd them with too many offers so as not to irritate your users, and also be aware of the causes that can activate anti-filters spam.

Whether you decide to use a content-based newsletter or multiple messages set up for direct sales, your ideal email marketing mix will be able to combine both strategies when you deem it most appropriate.

Take some time to think about the different versions of messages you can use, how they fit your email marketing goals, the size and content of your message database, and your internal resources.

Direct sales emails are best for acquisition, revenue generation, and recovering previously lost customers.

Direct sales emails can also play a role in keeping customers connected to the company name, its website and products, but should not be used as the exclusive means of achieving this.

Direct sales emails should absolutely not be used to increase customer loyalty and build your brand.

Now you can start to fully visualize the types of emails you might want to send.