What Guerrillas Know About Email
By Jay Conrad Levinson
Mark Twain said he never let his schooling interfere with his education. Regardless of your schooling, there’s little chance it covered what technology makes possible today. If you took a course in how computers can aid your marketing, the first insight you would have gained would be into the profitability for you if you become savvy about email.
Guerrillas a well aware that free marketing exists in its most free state as email, which is far more than merely letters with free postage. When you think of email, don’t compare it with snail mail because it’s considerably different. For one thing, response rates are higher. In fact, it is such an improvement on old-fashioned mail delivery that the U.S. Postal service now uses it, and today there is a lot more email being sent daily than snail mail. Soon, half of all bills and payments will be sent electronically.
You can use email in your marketing in ways that will make your customers delighted to be doing business with you. Guerrillas love email but hate spam. Their affinity to email is because they can deliver their messages instantly and to anywhere in the world if the recipients are online, as more and more of them are with each word I type. That means email saves you time in communicating and money that you used to spend on postage.
Each recipient can read your email on screen or print and save it just as with a standard letter, which does use paper. But you don’t have to print and save your email, saving you the cost of paper and the convenience of space. Save it in your computer. Make copies as you need them. All your files and memos can be kept in one convenient location. Each one is dated and timed. Many experts feel that for all the great things about being online, email is the most valuable of all computer applications.
Email also helps you save on the cost of courier service and faxing. You can use it to send brief messages or long documents, to send black and white communications or colorful, beautifully-designed materials. It’s easy for you and easy for the person who receives your email.
Who should that be? People who want to receive it. Find their names on your customer list, in the newsgroups to which you belong, in chatrooms where they’re talking about your industry. When using it, keep your message as brief as possible because people read computer screens differently than letters. They know being online saves time and don’t want to waste time reading long things. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Never use two words when one word will do." The most important part of your email? Your subject line. The best day to send it? Friday. The main reasons guerrillas like it so much? Ease of testing and absence of stamps. So stop licking and start clicking.
—
(Jay Conrad Levinson is the author of the "Guerrilla Marketing" series of books, the most popular marketing series in history with 14 million sold, now in 39 languages. At his new GuerrillaMarketingAssociation.com, you’ll find a new source of profit-producing ideas plus a list of 100 marketing weapons. Join up for telephone and online access to The Father of Guerrilla Marketing.)
