Tips for Email Procrastinators

Tips for Email ProcrastinatorsAs the multitaskers of the business world, marketers have a lot on their plates. Ideally, each day would provide ample time for creating and sending stellar newsletters to your eager subscribers.

But the truth of the matter is that very often, email marketing is pushed to the bottom of your never ending “to do” lists. There are so many pressing tasks at hand and sending email is so quick that you usually put it off until later, right?

Fortunately, these last minute tips for messages that should’ve gone out yesterday will get you out of the office by 5:00 and cozied up in front of the TV in no time.

Your 20-Minute Manual

Choose a Template

Not sure how you want your email to look? Picking a template can save a lot of time and aggravation. Depending on which one you choose, the columns will dictate the content and give your email focus.

Once you pick a template that suits your needs, simply pop your logo and important company information in and you’ll have a unique, customized template that you can use again and again – just by clicking copy.

To Insert Your Logo:

  1. Copy the image URL from your website.
  2. While editing your HTML message, place your cursor wherever you want the logo to appear.
  3. Click the yellow “Insert/Edit an Image” icon Insert:Edit Image that appears in the HTML editor.
  4. Paste the image URL in the “URL” field, then click the “Insert” button:

    Insert Image

Get Link Happy

According to Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of Marketing Experiments, your email has one job: it invites your subscribers to a mental conversation.

That conversation should take place back on your website, whether it be making a sale, sharing a blog post, offering a discount or taking reservations.

When you’re in a rush and hurrying to send your newsletter it’s easy to skip the extra steps. Be sure to make the invitation to conversation very clear with a few well-placed links to your contact page, store hours, menu, FAQ or other frequently sought pages.

Remember though, these secondary links shouldn’t distract from the main point or the call-to-action of the email.

Review Discarded Content

If you don’t already, get in the habit of saving the work that doesn’t make it into your messages. When you’re short on time and in a pinch, it’s the kindling for an incendiary newsletter.

If you find that you ramble on and always cut portions of text out of your pieces after writing them, keep the content that ends up on the cutting room floor and devote your newsletter focus to your brilliant insight that was previously too lengthy to publish.

You could even keep a folder with snippets of abandoned blog posts or newsletter articles handy when you’re working on your emails – so long as the content is valuable, your newsletter will build itself.

Spend Time on Your Subject Line

If your subject line doesn’t compel readers to open the email, the rest of your content goes unseen. Make sure it clearly presents the email’s value while staying consistent with your past subject lines.

In fact, you can use existing messages to guide you. Keep track of patterns in open rates to see which subject lines earned the most opens, then mimic the format with your new one.

Treat it like a game of Mad Libs and fill in the blanks:

If “Free Shipping – All Handbags, One Week Only!” was your message with the most opens, take out the specifics and replace them with this week’s deal.

“Free Shipping – Spring Essentials, Wednesday Only!” is new and different from the last, but the format worked for you before and should work again, according to the stats.

Procrastination in Moderation

It’s nerve wracking, but waiting until the last minute to send messages can actually work out in your favor…when you don’t make a habit of it!

Great campaigns do take time to plan and implement. How do you save time when writing your messages?

We’d love to hear your thoughts below!

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23 Comments

  1. Nora Rubinoff

    "…waiting until the last minute to send messages can actually work out in your favor…"

    Indeed! Some of my best ezines come from last minute creation. But you’re right — it’s not a good idea to make a habit of it.

    6/15/2010 9:56 am
  2. Carole

    Sigh… yes, I do need to get it together in the newsletter area. Thanks for the nudge and the good advice just when I needed it.

    6/15/2010 11:03 am
  3. Judy H Wright

    hello from Montana:

    Wow, just got back from the dentist and all the way home I kept repeating”I will get my ezine out today.”

    Very timely kick in the pants.

    Thanks

    6/15/2010 11:10 am
  4. Sean Breslin

    I’m very quilty of not giving email enought time! And should put email marketing higher on my priorities… Reading posts like this one, make me feel quilty!
    I will get round to it HONEST… really!

    6/15/2010 11:14 am
  5. Kerry Coates

    I only do my newsletters once a month, but STILL it is put off until I can’t put it off anymore. I have started a little notebook and all through the month when I see an idea or find a great health tip, I jot it down in the notebook so that I have mental triggers to refer to when the time comes. That has helped me TREMENDOUSLY in getting the newsletter done faster and has taken a lot of the anxiety out of "What should I write about this month?" I also look at the newsletters I wrote a year ago and re-create parts of them into fresh content if I am totally stumped about content ideas for the current month.

    6/15/2010 2:43 pm
  6. Nora Rubinoff

    I do an electronic version of what @Kerry does — I have both Evernote (free) and ToDoMatrix (paid) installed on my BlackBerry.

    When an idea comes to me, I clip it into Evernote or ToDoMatrix and save it in an Ezine Ideas folder.

    Later, when the "well seems dry," I’ll flip through my ideas for inspiration.

    I also leverage Aweber’s ability to allow me to schedule posts in advance. Sometimes I get really inspired and I’m able to write several ezines at one sitting. I write them then, and save/queue for delivery on the appropriate date and time.

    Thanks for the good article, Rebecca!

    6/15/2010 9:29 pm
  7. Rebecca Swayze

    Thanks for the feedback everyone!

    I think we’re all guilty of procrastinating every now and again. The key is to recognize it and take steps to finishing our emails a little earlier to take some of that stress away.

    Kerry – Love your notebook idea. It’s great to keep ideas in the same place.

    Nora – Evernote is fantastic. I’ve never heard of ToDoMatrix before, but I’ll be sure to check it out!

    6/16/2010 8:55 am
  8. Richard

    Agreed. My goal was to issue a weekly newsletter to my subscribers; at best I am delivering only about once a month (with the emphasis on "at best"). And then I tend to deliver too much content and overwhelm my readers.

    I personally don’t like newsletters with short abstracts and then links back to main body content, but the consensus appears that I am in the minority. I like long, comprehensive newsletters that I can print and save.

    I have received comments from some subscribers that my approach is too much for them and then they tend not to read anything (they would prefer to skim, select what they like, and then track back through the link to the site where they can read the full article).

    Thoughts, anyone?

    6/16/2010 11:44 am
  9. Robbin Barkley

    Email marketing is a big part of our business although I must admit that I have went a little slack with my newsletters. Love this article.

    6/16/2010 3:00 pm
  10. Maria Annell

    Richard,

    I’m personnally torn between the two approaches as well… :) But let’s face it: we’re writing for our readers, not for ourselves! (For that, the Internet God created blogs… :)

    Perhaps you could find a compromise: the newsletter would be just short intros, 3 or 4 lines with a link to “read more…” on each subject you want to discuss. For those who want to sit back with a cuppa and just ENJOY, you could provide a link to “the full story” or “print friendly, complete version” (you’ll have to come up with the proper wording here!) which would be on a web page with suitable layout, of course…

    Or – if you’re really ambitious – you could do both! Have them chose (into a custom field) their format when they subscribe, and create segments! With clever copying-and-pasting, it shouldn’t really double the work…

    Perhaps that helps? Looking forward to seeing what you do with this – I just subscribed! :)

    Cheers from France :)

    6/16/2010 6:04 pm
  11. Peter O'Rourke

    Look for opportunities all the time and capture them when you see them, you will NOT remember them later. You will receive newsletters, snail mail, phone calls from others. Things they do, say, or don’t do or don’t say will “strike you”. Write the idea down immediately.

    Really stuck? Write the alphabet A-Z vertically on a piece of paper. Now write 1 (or more) WORDS (NOT sentances), just a single word, starting with as many of the letters of the alphabet as you can. Don’t spend long on it. Just write the first word(s) that comes into your head for each letter. The words should relate to your market/subject area. Now you’ll have a list of things, some of which will immediately spark ideas for newsletters.

    Similar technique…. Pick something within 1 foot of you on your desk/near your PC. Write the letters down vertically and do similar to the above idea.. E.G. C O F F E E (Normally always a cup on my desk!)

    6/17/2010 12:57 am
  12. Katie

    I’m procrastinating writing an email now! This post came at a right time, because I definitely procrastinate. I’ve tried making notes of things to talk about, but that didn’t stick.
    Actually nothing has really stuck so I’ll need to think of something else. i was thinking just writing content in advance as much as I can and then schedule them for release.
    I also grab content from other articles I’d written for other blogs or projects and reuse them in my newsletter if I feel it’s appropriate. That certainly helps.
    I also take old emails and recreate if they have been a success.
    Definitely good tips to use right now :)

    6/17/2010 6:20 am
  13. Rebecca Swayze

    Fantastic thoughts, everyone!

    Richard – I don’t think I could have put it any better than Maria did. It would be really interesting to see how segments work for you in this situation. If you choose to take her advice, please let us know how it goes!

    Peter – What a wonderful idea for brainstorming. I am going to put this one to practice today!

    Katie – Great tactics. We always love hearing what works best for readers.

    6/17/2010 8:14 am
  14. Maria Annell

    Hi again…

    Richard, I’m sorry… You can not send follow ups to just a segment! So that leaves you with less options, except for the broadcasts…

    6/17/2010 5:34 pm
  15. pete

    With life so hectic, I’ve certainly UnSubscribed from many Ezines that are long content that you have to read through to find any useful stuff.

    My choice is to send (and receive) more regular (Weekly?) Ezines with good short descriptive abstracts and then links back to main body content. This frequent content keeps you uppermost in your client’s mind and as long as it is valuable relevant content, it should hit the spot!
    It’s very easy to find other people’s content & video clips that you can link to as well.

    All easy to say! But sometimes harder to action unless we realise that building our lists can get us to the point where writing & sending a message can bring us (or our clients) a quick income injection.

    6/18/2010 4:47 am
  16. Derek

    Great information. I try keep my letters as generic as possible (nothing that gives away dates, etc) and whip them into an autoresponder series that takes care of my "email responsibilities" for a while.

    This also ensure that the tone is fairly consistent, which is something that I tend to mess up if I send out broadcasts once a month/week/day, etc.

    6/18/2010 6:43 am
  17. Joe

    Newsletters are a great exercise in Time management because they are INHERENTLY due to go out at predetermined intervals. I guess the easiest way is to have a template with all the standard links images and text that you can copy, then just paste the new content over the old in the pertinent areas. For the “news” content, as soon as you write a new article or a longer post/comment somewhere else, quickly copy the Title and the 1st couple sentences and paste them into your newsletter with a link. If by the time your newsletter is set to go out, you don’t have enough new content, DON’T WAIT, go to an article directory where you can quickly republish relevant content from an open source, like Ezine articles or one of the many other sources of re-publishable info.

    6/18/2010 6:54 am
  18. Richard

    Wow, great ideas . . . thank you everyone for the input. I now have (in mind, not on paper – yet) a clear picture of my Email Newsletter.

    Maria, great ideas. I appreciate the input.

    Pete, your impartial honesty is very helpful and mirrors what others have commented to me regarding my existing approach.

    Joe, I love the ideas of having a template all set up. I know Aweber has the HTML templates, etc., but what I am getting from you is more along the lines of my personal format for the newsletter. I think consistency (along with minor experimental tweeking to always improve) is very important so that the readers know what to expect.

    Rebecca, great topic to get the creative juices flowing.

    I will implment these changes in my next issue and RESOLVE to make this a weekly event. There really is no excuse not to; a timely and informative newsletter is, IMHO, a great marketing tool.

    Thx, all.

    6/18/2010 8:39 am
  19. Lalitha Brahma

    I committed to send my Ezines twice a month-1st and 15th. However this time I just sent it today and after that I am reading your article. Thanks for the tip!
    I have divided my Ezine into sections such as Quote, Note form Lalitha, Featured Article, Lalitha Recommends. Whenever I get an idea for content for any of these sections, either I write it down OR save it in a word document. When Ezine deadline approaches, I have something in place to write about. It becomes easy to write and enjoy the process.

    I have heard from email marketing gurus that it is profitable to set up the Ezine for the whole year and not worry every time. However, personally, I can’t do this. I need to connect with my Ezine subscribers when I write and that I can do, only in Real time-That is when the Ezine is due for sending out!

    6/18/2010 10:28 am
  20. Kel

    Great comments and suggestions. I have been under-utilising AWeber and email marketing for 4 years, and so I am possibly the master of procrastination.

    I did try to ramp things up a bit about a month ago, and added more content to a HTML format template I created myself. The open-rate appears to have increased (hard to tell given AWeber do not count unique opens), but I think my problem might still be in the content.

    I just can’t seem to come up with what is needed to convert visitors to revenue. I have been giving free stuff for about 2 years, and it certainly helped build the database but not revenue. So, still working on that.

    Certainly a HTML template has worked better for me than text. Even simply formatted font has worked better than plain text. I would be interested to hear what others have experienced in this regard? Is this a country-specific aspect to Internet marketing?

    6/28/2010 8:27 pm
  21. Oma Edoja

    Hi everyone!

    I just thought to share this with you.
    I used to dread writing my newsletter, and this caused the till-last-minute procrastination.
    After some soul-searching and re-alignment I now have my newsletter ready 3 days before it goes out, and I LOVE doing it! And I publish every two weeks.

    What changed?

    1. My niche. I was unclear and unfocused. Once I found a clear niche that excited me, writing my newsletter became exciting! And reader-feedback too!

    2. My content. I used to have too many "pieces" in my newsletter. It was like a magazine! Now I have one targeted article plus news, announcements and a personal note. I send readers to my blog or website for further info.

    3. Support. I now have a virtual assistant who does the techie stuff. Before, I agonized over it for days, pulling out my hair in the process!

    Apart from the ease and energy I now feel about my newsletter, my subscriber list, open rate and number of clicks have all shot up high! Quadrupled in most cases! I also get more website traffic and enquiries as a result!

    If you struggle with your newsletter, these 3 tips might help.

    7/6/2010 8:34 pm
  22. Chris

    It always nice to have some extra time to relax and watch tv. Thank you for the idea of template. Internet marketing, just like any other job takes lot of time and energy. Sometimes it takes more time than you would normally spend on 8 hour shift job. Any tip and ideas are always a plus. Love your article.

    7/26/2011 9:51 pm

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