The advice I’m going to give in this post is so obvious, it’s ridiculous. The only thing that’s even more ridiculous is that people don’t seem to do this one thing in the first place.
I receive around five sales emails every single day, weekends included.
I got one today that was selling a series of coaching seminars (I get lots of these), which contained tired lines that I see in every email of the same kind;
‘Come and hear the real story about…’
‘You’ll be taught new strategies, never heard before…’
‘Tickets are usually £X, but for you they’re available at the special price of £Y’
‘[something about ‘learning to keep your focus and never give up’]’
‘How to generate massive profits’
‘…plus this one, top secret bit of information…’
‘This ticket price is only available for the next 7 days / we only have limited places’
What I find amazing is this: none of those who write these emails seem to spend even one minute looking at what their competitors send out (or looking at their competitor’s websites), so that they can write something different / avoid sending me the same email I’ve already seen four times that day (bar the name of the person sending it).
It’s either that or they are aware of what their competitors send… and just choose to send the same old crap as them.
My tip is so simple that – as I said at the start of this post – it’s ridiculous: if you’re running an email campaign (or any campaign), have a look at what your competitors are doing so you don’t write the same boring crap as them.
Sign up to five of your competitor’s mailing lists, start receiving their emails, and look at what they say and how they say it.
In addition to that, spend at least a couple of hours looking through those same competitor’s websites… for exactly the same reasons.
Learn what you offer that they don’t. Learn what they offer that you don’t. If you both offer the same thing, work out how you can say it differently to them… so that your campaign doesn’t look like the same old, tired sales spiel (spam, spam, spam… delete, delete, delete).
Maybe you think; ‘I haven’t got time to spend two hours looking at the web content of my rivals – I just need to get this email campaign out.’
That’s fine, but the likelihood is that your email will just be lumped in with all the other spam emails someone has received that day… then deleted in one go.
If you want your campaigns to stand out (email of otherwise), invest the time in looking at your competitors and what they’re doing – that way you don’t send out bland, ‘me too’, industry standard, junk box fodder.