The Importance of Setting and Meeting Expectations In Email Marketing

Have you ever been so excited about an email that you couldn’t wait for it to hit your inbox? You end up checking your email every 15 minutes to make sure you didn’t miss it. That kind of excitement is wonderful and it is something to strive for in your own email marketing.

While you may not be able to create that amount of excitement and interest with all your emails, there are some things you can do to create a little buzz and get your subscribers looking for your emails. Part of it is of course to deliver great content and share things they are very interested in. Part of it creating buzz and anticipation by using foreshadowing in your emails. This simply means that you tease them about what’s coming in the next email from you.

By far, the most important thing you can do to ensure your readers are looking for your emails is to set and then meet expectations in your email marketing. You want your readers to get an idea for how often you’ll be emailing them. If you are sending your emails out newsletter style, tell them what day of the week they should look for your next issue. If you’re setting up auto-responder messages, let them know you’ll share a new tip with them every day for the next week. Then at the end of that email series, share what they can expect to happen next. For example, you can let them know that you’ll be emailing about once a week. That’s setting email delivery expectations.

You can also set expectations for the type of content they can expect in emails from you. This can be very helpful in training your readers on what to look for from you. Ideally you want to share a mix of helpful content and offers for products and services your readers may be interested in. Letting them know that you will mix the two and will only promote products you’ve tried yourself for example, or have made sure are of high quality and will be helpful to them, can go a long way towards building trust and not sounding pushy or “salesy”.

Once you’ve set those expectations, your most important job will then be to meet and even exceed them. If you’ve promised your readers a new email every Wednesday morning, make sure that happens. If you promised to share a case study for using a particular product the following week, make sure that happens. Yes, life will get in the way, and yes, there will be times when you can’t keep your promise…. But do what you can to meet and exceed the expectations you’ve set with your readers. Really thing of it as a promise you made them that you don’t want to break unless absolutely necessary.

Doing this will create a lot of trust, and loyalty with your readers. If they learn that you’re a trustworthy person and they can take your word at face value, they will be that much more likely to take you up on any product offers and will go from subscribers to happy customers who will buy from you again and again… and that my friend is the key to email marketing success

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