What to expect when you are Emailing.

First things first - this post is for those still in the early days of flirting with email campaigns. There is plenty of great information out there about more advanced techniques, delivery rates, success metrics & the like but I thought it may be useful to set out first principles - well first !

For the uninitiated then there are 3 types of results that we can expect from emails - all of them useful in their own way.

You've got to Mail !

1. Email read - this is a perfectly valid response. In most cases when we first send an email this is the best result we can expect. The intention of the mail is to let new people know of us or remind people we have been in touch with in the past about us. Think of this as a Shout Out - useful to identify people with whom a longer conversation is warranted or possible but requiring follow thru'. 

2. Clicking through a link in the email - this is much more likely to happen when the email itself calls for that specific action, for eg. the mail campaign itself is talking about a whitepaper & inviting people to download it from the link. In some emails the link is provided only in support of the central message - for instance a link to a webpage. A lack of large nos. of people clicking through this should not necessarily be a cause for concern. What I would definitely recommend is staying connected with  people who do click through such. They are more likely to have some future need coming down the turnpike for which they may be at an early stage of exploration - hence the kicking of the tyres.

3. Email reply - in my personal experience follow-up campaigns sometimes stand a greater chance of eliciting this response than the initial email campaign. Broadly there are 3 kinds of replies - 

a) We like what we hear but we don't have any need right now

b) Don't bother me

c) Something specific in relation to a need or a query 

We have to take care to stay in touch & build a relationship with the people who give the first response, make sure that we do not send any more unsolicited emails to the second category & jump all over the third category. 

Something more specific, links to referenceable work, something cool to showcase etc. is much more likely to have an impact with the first category - there the need is to grow the initial interest so we should respond to their mail with something tailored to their specific area of interest.  

Coming to the dream response - people who have a specific need. To a large extent this is completely unpredictable given that this is only going to occur when there is a live opportunity at the prospect. We can only hope to maximize the probability of this response by covering as much ground as possible through well thought out & targeted email campaigns.

So to all the email campaign newbies out there - start drafting those mails & putting together those campaigns because if you are not reaching out to your prospects your competitors definitely are & chances are they're using mail to do so !