The Power of the Personal

The biggest challenge for the marketer is to get prospects to actually pay attention and read what you are sending them. It does not matter if your list of Twitter followers is 100,000 or your email list has 10,000 if no one reads what you send.

The easiest (well not real easy) way to get people to read is to send something that is personal.

I never cease to be amazed at the people who use the standard Linkedin "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." with no additional comment. Adding a simple, "Jim, we met at such and such show..." would go so far in making me click the connect. Recently I have been promoting a book I contributed to called "Entrepreneurial Effect".

I have been sending dozens of emails saying "Sue - I would appreciate your help by tweeting this...." (that is a blatant hint, please tweet it for me) And if I have something personal like "How is your son", I add that too. So why is this not easy? It is, but is takes a lot of time. Personal emails often evoke personal responses that again need action. And just the time to personalize them can take a minute each so it is tough to do that to a 10,000 person list. Being personal has a secondary advantage. I tend to develop and keep relationships with people that I personally correspond with.

The mail equivalent of this is the simple hand written note on the mailing.

This is a highly effective technique for getting things read (and improving your handwriting muscles). This is the age old marketing dilema. Quality (the personal touch) vs Quantity (worst case would be straight spam). Quality gets response (I get 80-90% of the people I send a personal email to, to respond) where just sending emails to a list often evokes only a 1-2% response. Personal can be 40-90 times as effective. For true results - try personal.

Jim Estill

Tags: Advertising, Direct Marketing