INTRODUCTION:
Each week, we select a company and review their visible email marketing tactics. We never know what’s going on behind the scenes, but there are always lessons learned by looking in the window.
This week we’re looking at mailcloud.com
The first thing we do when we examine a company to review their email marketing practices is to zoom to their homepage and take a look for signs of email marketing.
When we get to their home page we behave like an interested party and start to look around.
We were very intrigued when we got to their home page. We hadn’t seen anything like it for a long time:
That’s it. That’s all there was on the home page. We liked it… and immediately filled in the form. What could be hiding behind the form?
1: The world’s most popular radio station: WIIFM
We liked this approach. We’re fans of all things simple. Yet we couldn’t help but notice there was one marketing principle that was ignored. There is no benefit in the headline. “Discover the new way to email”
Here’s what’s happening here. The use of the word discover in the headline is excellent. It’s a good lead. The use of the words ‘new way’ are also excellent choices. Then we stop. ‘new way to email’ ends it. And that’s where our radio station comes into play. In your reader’s mind, loud and clear, they are dialed into “WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?”… WIIFM
They are left hanging. What would make this home page more powerful would be to add on a powerful benefit statement to answer the WIIFM question.
If you’re writing headlines like this on your web page or in your email here’s how you test to see if you got it right. Just say out loud, “So What?” after your statement. If there is no answer… you have no benefit.
Benefits are age-old proven copy writing techniques. Don’t ignore them.
2: Use of your Thank You Page (WIIFM revisited)
Here’s the Thank You Page you are delivered to when you fill in the form. The curiosity was killing us.
We know things are just starting to happen at mailcloud.com but we think more effort could go into the copy. Better copy means better results. And there’s usually someone in every company who is responsible for results.
On a side note. We have a great gateway page that collects an email address and we have a great Thank You page (if benefits are added). What we don’t have is a way to separate the visitors from the qualified visitors.
If I were doing a Thank You page like this I would have another way for the more qualified visitor to show themselves. Perhaps it’s an offer of a white paper, links to a blog, or a request for the beta to be sent ASAP (skip the line type of offer). All of these techniques would start segmenting the list of respondents into different buckets so you can then tailor the messages for them.
3: A great Welcome Email (This is FANTASTIC)
We always like to show you something done well when we see it and this Welcome Email is simply one of the best. Here it is. See the points below to see why it’s so good.
Thank You Email Best Practices.
- The design is perfect. It looks like it came directly from the CEO. No fancy graphics or design.
- It’s personal, not corporate.
- It sounds like a real person wrote it. “Thanks!” and “Have a great day!”
- The signature line is brilliant. It gives the right amount of authority but doesn’t welcome unwanted calls.
- There is one clickable call to action. Specific to build their Twitter base and ideal to track clicks.
- Oh, and it tells you what’s going to happen next.
- Finally, it’s asking a quick question. It almost forces you to reply.
If you can incorporate these techniques into your emails, you will be ahead of 80% of emailers out there. The numbers don’t lie!
CONCLUSION:
We enjoyed reviewing this company and look forward to what other emails will follow this one. If they are doing a good job, we’ll see the next one within 24 hours and another within 48 hours of that.
Ideally, those two messages would look like this, follow the same concepts, and get me engaged more.
Learn 7 core strategies used by professional email marketers.