Your first client email could be exactly what you need to set your business on the fast track to long-term, unprecedented success. If you have not taken advantage of all that email marketing has to offer, then there is a tremendous resource in front of you. There is an opportunity for you to reach out to your customers and start your relationship with them on the right foot.
For any email campaign, there are tried-and-true tactics. If you make the right choices about your first email, you can drastically improve the chance that your emails turn into engagements and sales. This is about your first impression, and as the old saying goes: you only get one chance!
Many other entrepreneurs and business owners have discovered what client emails can do, distinguishing themselves by sending out welcome and introduction emails that communicate who they are and establish what their brand means. You can do the same.
There are certain steps that you need to take, however, in order to do that. By taking the right approach and making the right choices for your first email, you can avoid the pitfalls that others fall into.
Write attracting titles
For example, you should write strong, snappy headlines. You want to use as few words and possible and make the words that you do use exciting. When someone does a quick survey of your email, they should understand what you are saying and care about it. Your message should jump out at them.
It should be clear, from the get-go, what your emails are about so that you are not losing anyone’s attention. This is one of the most tragic possibilities, especially for a first email: people who would otherwise care about what you have to say may lose interest if you fail to get to the point quickly enough.
Your headline should also require minimal investment from anyone who reads it. That means you are not using any complicated words and concepts. Someone who has never even heard of your brand should understand what you can do for them.
Use a clear and logic progression
The same ideas apply to the body of your emails. Apart from your headlines, you should structure your first email in such a way that you are taking up no more space and no more time than absolutely necessary.
Within your messages, there should be a clear progression, from the first line to the second to third and so on. You are taking your customers on a journey, walking them through your thought process so that they understand your brand more fully.
Less is better
Brevity is also a virtue in your first email. Assume that you get five or maybe ten seconds to say what you need to say. Any more than that and the interaction becomes a net-negative because your customer perceives you as a time waster.
It is also critical that, within your messages, you add a personal touch. You want your customers to feel that you are speaking to them as people, not as names on a list. They should get the impression that you care about them and that you think about them as an individual.
Say that you have built up a database that includes hometowns. Within your first email, you may mention something about each customer’s hometown. You are drawing upon that information to make the email friendlier and more intimate.
Of course, you also want to be careful not to stretch your email beyond its natural bounds. You should stay on message, avoiding anything off-topic and eliminating any extra, superfluous information. Center your first email on the introduction, keeping a sharp focus.
Do not put more than the customer requests
The message within your first email should be light because the last thing you want is to leave your customer feeling overwhelmed. Try to come up with a fun way to frame your brand, present that within the email, and then state that the lines of communication are open. That is it.
Invite your readers to take action
At the end of your email, you will then include a clear and concrete call-to-action. You want to give your customer something to do, to avoid the interaction going to waste and coming to nothing. Whatever your customer can do to engage with your brand further, incite them to do it.
Good calls-to-action include “Visit our website for more information” and “Contact us to learn more” because it is clear what you want your customers to do. Your call-to-action should lead into something that will help your business and serve your customer simultaneously. Then, the more enticing and the clearer it is, the more effective your first email is going to be.
