Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

Ask Yellow Dog: Why Are My Unsubscribe Numbers Up?

by // Leave a Comment

I recently spoke with someone about their newsletter. Their unsubscribe numbers were up and they asked me to take a look. Not a problem! I looked at a couple recent newsletters and noticed a very common mistake:

Too Much Selling

You may be scaring potential clients away because you’re trying to sell to them ALL THE TIME. Back up.
The point of your newsletter is to educate your network so they WANT to hire you when it’s the right time FOR THEM. Your newsletter is consistent so when they are ready to buy they know where to find you. (This happened again for me last week!)
If you only are ever selling me stuff I’m less inclined to buy. Prove it. Show me how awesome you are each and every month in your newsletter with the knowledge you have to share.
I agree that there’s a lot of selling, but then how do you let people know you’ve got stuff that could help them? this is what I don’t understand.
You can sell, but tone it down a notch (or 10). My suggestion in this case was to streamline the message and only focus on one offering a month. If you have 5 great offers that’s AWESOME – and put that into 5 months of content. Your readers have a million other things going on each day – I’d much rather read a quick newsletter with one clear option and realize “nope, not the right fit for me.” Instead of having to decipher which one of these 5 is the right one for me right now.

Be clear in what your newsletter is supposed to do for your audience:

  • Educate your audience about your awesomeness (you’re the expert, you can help them with this problem, you have the answers)
  • Give them useful tools and/or information so they can try it themselves
  • An option to work with you if outsourcing it or hiring someone is what they need
If you’re giving away too much information people will go in the opposite direction of what you want. Take a minute this week to review your newsletter – are you overwhelming people with options and they’re running away?

3 More Ways to Increase Your Newsletter Open Rate

by // Leave a Comment

A colleague of mine recently reached out to help figure out why the open rates on a clients email were lower than they had hoped for. They were able to share some analytics with me and I was able to help give some recommendations. I wrote a few months ago about 4 Ways to Increase Your Newsletter Open Rate and today I have 3 more ideas to share with you based on our conversation.

  1. Change the Day – This client is a retail location and they were sending on Thursday’s during the day. My exact suggestion was since it’s a retail location don’t send mid-day Thursday’s. People may be thinking about needing to shop at this store but probably won’t have time to really consider it till Thursday evening when they’re home and know they need to get it done this weekend (a great time to send) or even Sunday’s as they’re planning out their week.
  2. Review Your Reporting – MailChimp has a LOT of great reporting tools. Download your sent campaigns report and start to look for trends. With this client, Thursday’s had their worst open rates. I had a client who didn’t like her open rates (BTW they were ridiculous and I’d kill for them) but we looked and found Monday’s at 11:45 were the best open rate. We’ve moved back to that time (for now) and the numbers have increased again which is great.
  3. A/B Testing– How’s your subject line? Test it. Maybe it’s your delivery time (7 am? 5pm? Tuesday? Sunday?) Test it. MailChimp makes it easy to test a lot of different variables. I would suggest testing ONE thing at a time not three, but make sure you test to make sure you’re sending WHAT and WHEN your subscribers want it.

What do you do to up your newsletter open rate?

5 Reasons I Prefer MailChimp to Constant Contact

by // 1 Comment

5 Reasons I Prefer MailChimp to Constant ContactI was talking with a potential new client the other day about their newsletter. They currently use Constant Contact and I asked how big their list is –  under 1,000 contacts. So, I made my usual recommendation to switch to MailChimp. Why? Because it’s free for up to 2,000 email addresses, and most of my clients are under that threshold.

Also, let’s be honest here. Constant Contact is like having an AOL email account. I’m going to judge you for it.

I know that sounds terrible, but it’s true. A big part of that is that it’s been around for so long. But also, the functionality is clunky. Yes I spend a LOT of my day in MailChimp so I am biased towards it, but every time I work with Constant Contact I realize just how dated their system feels. So, I will continue to make the recommendation  to move to MailChimp from Constant Contact.

Here’s 5 more reasons…

  • MailChimp is FREE for up to 2,000 email addresses. Constant Contact charges you regardless of your list size. FREE is a very good price for a small business owner on a budget!
  • Constant Contact charges you MORE for automation. MailChimp introduced FREE automation last year. I also have an issue with charging me more for automation. Just have a flat rate and include everything. I don’t want to be nickled and dimed…
  • I find 99% of my answers in the MailChimp Knowledge Base. While free accounts don’t have access to customer service chat/phone they have such a deep knowledge base that I rarely have to chat with them (I have a paid account) and when I do they are SUPER helpful and I’ve been thanked for my crazy questions.
  • Multiple Users – in MailChimp I can setup myself as another user for client accounts. This means I can tell when I did something or when my client jumped in to futz with a newsletter. This is especially handy if you have multiple people working on your newsletter. Constant Contact only allows one user at their basic level which means you’re sharing passwords and never know who broke what…
  • I love the ease of integrations with MailChimp – I have my CRM linked to MailChimp, my bookkeeping system linked to MailChimp and my PayPal is linked to it so I can automatically send thank you emails when I receive payment.

I can go on and on about why I like MailChimp better (and they don’t pay me to!) but if you are considering the right email marketing program for your growing business I’m going to almost always recommend you go with MailChimp. And that potential client is now a new client who’s first newsletter went out through MailChimp this week!