For many months now I’ve deliberated over the idea of possibly abandoning (like a dog getting rid of the runt in her litter) the Email Service Provider (ESP) I’ve been using to send emails.
If you’re not sure what an ESP is, it’s a platform like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Klaviyo or Hubspot that you use to send emails to your business contacts.
My reasons for doing this are NOT because my current ESP is necessarily bad or difficult to use for sending emails and managing email lists… but because the more I learn and practice effective email marketing, through my own emails and those of clients I work with, the more I arrive at the conclusion that the old masters of advertising were right when they said “don’t make your advertising look like advertising”.
The more your ad looks like an ad the lower your response will be and the more annoying your ad will be perceived.
If advertising in a magazine, make your ad look like a magazine article.
On social media make your ads look like organic posts.
Which brings me to email service providers…
No matter how you format your email in an ESP it will never look like a truly personal email unless your ESP formats your message the same way your email software such as Outlook or Gmail or Yahoo formats a personal email to a friend.
And therein lies the problem and the solution.
No ESP that I’m aware of formats your emails exactly like a plain text email in Gmail etc, even if you select the plain text option.
So instead of using a popular ESP to send my emails, I have exported my email list into a plain old CSV file and will now send via gmail.
By doing it this way I can guarantee all my emails look like an email sent from a friend and not from a marketing company.
Of course, that means I have no way of tracking open rates or click throughs, metrics I don’t care about anyway. And I don’t automatically have an unsubscribe button at the bottom of every email. However, I am adding an automatic footer that explains how to unsubscribe if you wish to.
Is this an approach you should take in your email marketing?
That depends on your current volume of emails and the delivery rate you are getting with your current esp. Plus a few other factors I may write about in future issues/episodes of this email newsletter.
The upshot of sending emails directly from Gmail is it makes it easier to have a dialogue back and forth with my readers. You will receive questions, comments, or responses from your contact directly inside gmail instead of having to log into a separate software program to get your reply.
Now, if you’re using some kind of database to track all conversations between you and your prospects or clients then this may not be useful for you.
But if you’re just starting to build an email list for marketing purposes, and don’t need all the bells and whistles of an expensive ESP…
Meaning, you just want to write an email, hit send, and make sales…
And you want your emails to look like a message from a friend instead of a commercial message from a business so you get better delivery, avoid the promotions tab, and get your message into the inbox where it will be seen and read… then doing it this way might be a good place to start.
All for now.
Peace,
Michael Low
PS: if you’re NOT on my emails list to get regular articles and insights into building your business through better marketing and advertising you can jump on my email list here. If you ever wish to leave my email list you can unsubscribe at anytime and I’ll disappear from your inbox like a ninja in the night.