Become A Better Email Marketer: Subscriber Expectations

Consistency is one of the most important expectations in your email marketing campaigns. When subscribers sign up for a "free ebook", or a "free gift"----that's what they expect: to receive one email that contains the link to receive the ebook/gift that they signed on for. They do not expect to begin receiving daily, weekly or monthly emails from you. If they do start receiving unwanted emails from you, then it's realistic to expect that they will report you for spamming.

Consistency matters – but before you can consistently meet the expectations of your Readers, you have to set them! If your subscribers don’t know what’s coming, it doesn’t matter how consistent the formatting and frequency are – those emails will still feel inconsistent with whatever preconceived notions subscribers had about them.

So how do you create expectations that you then meet?

As I see it, you get 3 critical opportunities to do so.

Today, let’s discuss the first one:

Create Subscriber Expectations Before The Opt-In

The minute potential subscribers become aware that you’re even offering something by email, they begin to make assumptions about that offering, like:

* What they’ll get from you if they sign up
* How often they’ll get it
* The value/benefit to them if they sign up (or the lack of it)
* The cost to them if they sign up (their time and privacy, plus: are you going to share their email address with someone else?)

If you don’t replace these assumptions with expectations that match what will actually happen, then these potential subscribers either won’t sign up, or they’ll be confused/dissatisfied/angry when what actually happens doesn’t match those assumptions. Which means that the next thing you must do is......

Clearly Explain, In or Near Your Opt-in Form:

* What kind of content you’ll be sending (you may even want to link to a sample email)
* How they’ll benefit as a subscriber (this is your email’s value proposition: why should someone subscribe?)
* When/how often the subscriber will hear from you (estimate if need be)
* What you do and won’t do with subscribers’ information (this may not be necessary in all cases – especially if you already have the visitor’s trust – but in general it’s a good idea)

Hope you enjoy this posting; Critical Opportunities #2 and #3 will be posted shortly. How are your efforts going with email marketing?


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