The reply from a “fan” to a recent email newsletter read:
Jeff,
Your newsletter is the best I have ever seen. You captured the attention of every behavior style. I really would like to have a confidential conversation with you as soon as you have some time. If you could schedule it this week I would really make every effort to accommodate your availability.
Warmly,
These are the types of emails we all like to receive as a result of our marketing efforts. We want people who freely express gratitude, find value with what we offer, and want our help.
Following are my thoughts on what I believe is essential to connect with your audience.
Good marketing is like a conversation.
Conversations are full of stops and starts, incomplete thoughts, ideas, and circumstances. Today marketers must cut through the clutter of mundane messages and give audiences a reason to respond and come along for the journey.
It’s not easy to connect.
If you want to connect with your audience, you must learn to “give” to them.
The essence of successful marketing is focus — focusing on the emotional content and the one key idea you want to get across, and most of all focusing on the audience.
Thus, marketing needs to proceed logically, in complete thoughts, with stops along the way for the audience to check its comprehension or to provide help in getting them back on the journey.
Help your audience to participate.
Let your audience act upon your ideas. Move them from passive to active.
It’s not your newsletter that moves people to action; it’s giving yourself that moves people. It’s your ideas, experiences, creativity, likability, and trust that persuade the audience and shows that you care and can solve their problem.
Focus.
Your focus should be on your audience; the audiences should be on your content.
Take your audience on a journey from why to how.
Why? Why am I here? Why is this important? Why should I pay attention?
Keep giving.
You will be tempted to stop. You may feel nobody is listening. You may think it’s not working. Keep going and growing your list. Continue to refine your show so that it becomes worthy of someone’s attention.
You can either change the world a little bit at a time, or you can leave no trace that you were ever here.