The next-day email knocks ’em dead
If your email open rate for your home care clients is 25%, that’s about average.
But why be satisfied with average?
Reach high. In this article, imagine that I am the famous college basketball coach Bobby Knight. I want you, as a player, to be better than even you want to be.
We at Savvy Senior Marketing have consistently been getting email open rates way above 25%. Recently our average is 32%. On our welcome email, we recently averaged 42%.
And the amazing thing is – that’s from a list scraped from the internet. (Yes, this is legal, if you follow the CAN-SPAM laws of 2003 and 2008, and the FDA guidelines as they are interpreted – which we do.)
One email with a followup the next day is a good technique, as seen above.
Spam hacker with vodka
Scraped lists are often spam – a generic message with spelling errors written to hundreds of thousands of anonymous people by a basement-apartment hacker sitting at his laptop in Bucharist with an open bottle of vodka at his side.
But ours are not like that. They are carefully culled from various places with names of home care agency owners and other information about them. Our newsletters are crafted so that occasionally people are often convinced that each one is personally written from our office individually to them.
The next-day email trick
There is a neat trick that compels readers to open your emails and take action. It involves two emails – one sent a day after the other. After you send your first email, the second one should say simply something brief and informal, like “Did you get my email yesterday?” Another good subject line is simply, “Whoops.” In the preview line, which people see in their browsers, you want to say “I meant to tell you this.”
People are attracted to an admission of guilt. Humility and apology sparks curiousity. Make this followup newsletter short, repeating your initial offer in only a few sentences. That way those who read it before won’t get turned off. Put in a link to your offer.
Sending an email the next day multiplies the effect without a lot of effort. You might think that people are offended with two emails about the same offer. But they don’t mind. People have to be reminded to do things over and over. Sales comes from repeated efforts.
We’ve researched the way home care agencies market their services. And this is what we’ve found that the best home care agencies are using.
Click for your free guide, “5 Top Marketing Methods Used by Home Care Agencies.” Keep up with best practices. Don’t get left behind.
Example: book sales with next-day email
This technique worked recently for one of our nonprofit clients. They were excited because they got four orders overnight for a book that we advertised about in an email sent the day before. This also was a next-day followup email, sent to their list of more than 1,600 subscribers. In this second email, sixteen of them clicked on the link leading to the order page. Of those 16 came the four purchases. This is 1/4 of one percent of the entire list. It sounds small, but it’s not bad considering these emails can be stacked in an automated system that keeps on giving. As new subscribers come through the path, they get the marketing emails, ensuring a steady supply of sales.
The take-away here, once again, is that this was the second email sent for the same book in two days. The first day’s email results? My client said nothing about any orders. It was the second-day email that clinched it. The subject line for the second email was our tried and true, “Did you get our email yesterday?” It sounds too simple to be true. But it works. I find that our clients, on the other hand, keep trying to mess with this simple formula. Just keep it the way it is, or vary it only slightly.
Home care example: second-day email
I have found this simple second-day email subject line has a high open rate for another campaign we are running.
In other words, the first email in the sequence served as a warm-up, and the second one – even though it had a 6% lower open rate, brings home the action. The repeated appeal thus has a multiplier effect. You have to just repeat the request. The repetition of emails with a short informal subject line for the second email is very effective.
Then in the preview line, maybe something about how people responded to the first email, such as “Many of you have read it already!”
Then for the body of the email itself, make a short, urgent and thankful appeal.
Repitition followed by brevity is a winner.
Would you like to get better results for your home care client email list? Or get more engagement from them? Or have someone set up an automatic sequence of emails for you? If you would like help writing emails, setting up a campaign, or just need to learn what to say in your emails, let’s talk about it. We are knowledgeable in the home care field. Set a time to talk on my appointment calendar.