Handing over the reins of the Bristol Editor blog this week again – to Angela Ellis, Managing Director of Hertfordshire-based marketing consultancy Stop The Train.

I’ve known Angela for nearly nine years, and have been consistently impressed, amused and inspired by her, and her views on effective contemporary marketing.

Over to you Angela!

As a business owner, I receive my fair share of emails.

After the spam filter kindly removes most of those ‘enhancement offers’ that I have no interest in, I’m left with an inbox containing the remainder of the good, the bad and the indifferent.

I then attack that inbox like a woman on a mission. My aim? To be left only with those of importance, interest, and possibly a little humour.

I start by removing the ‘bad’.

These will include emails from anyone I don’t know (that aren’t sales enquiries, of course) and any that have a dubious subject header.

Then to tackle the ‘indifferent’. Book that event? No. A newsletter that contains absolutely no news? Definitely not. After exhausting the delete button, I’ll have only the most riveting elements of today’s arrivals.

I can almost hear you saying (heavy on the sarcasm), “that’s fascinating Angela, but why is email marketing a waste of my time?”

The story of my approach did serve a purpose.

I won’t be the only business owner being brutal with their inbox. Getting in their inbox is your first challenge, getting opened is your second, and getting on is your third.

Assuming you’ve got an up-to-date, accurate database of permission-based email addresses, and you’ve taken care to remove all the spam indicators, you’ll get in their inbox.

But you’re wasting your time with email marketing if you’ve fallen at the second hurdle – getting opened.

Have you used a subject header that failed to get my attention?  *DELETE

Did you send me an email from someone I’ve never heard of, rather than your organisation? Susan who? Never heard of her. *DELETE

There’s more to tell, of course, so why not pop over to Stop The Train to find out more.

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