Partner dancing tip to get emails to the inbox

by

Seth Godin describes a problem familiar to any email marketer:  getting into the inbox.

A problem solver like any good entrepreneur, he created a solution specific to Gmail. But Google blocked it.

Here’s an excerpt from the attempted solution’s website 98 Voices:

“Permission marketing is the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to the people who want to get them. Akimbo’s founder, Seth Godin, wrote a book about this twenty years ago. Along the way, many marketers have abused the idea, and as a result, email marketing has, in the wrong hands, gotten annoying.

“But punishing the people and organizations that you actually want to hear from doesn’t help anyone.

“We don’t think it benefits you to have the messages you want to get stolen from your inbox and moved to a place where you can’t see them.

“And we know it’s a problem for people and organizations that want to create useful content, because if they’re not reaching their audience, it’s hard for them to keep making the work that matters.”

“…These are the blogs and the updates and the announcements that are very definitely NOT promotions. They’re anticipated, personal and relevant messages, delivered with permission.

“Google has business reasons to quarantine notes like this, but it’s not the right thing to do.”

Why this matters

Email is foundational to the direct, personal relationship you can build with your customers. But the emails you send are only useful if they’re in the in-box.

Remember the ‘tree falling in the forest’ that doesn’t make a sound unless there’s someone’s ear there to hear it?

So…aim foremost for your subscribers to open your emails. Then Gmail and others will be more likely to deliver to the inbox the next time.

The one thing you ought do to encourage the opening of the message is to perfect the timing of when you send it.

It’s mostly about timing.

Anticipation, expectation, timing. Kind of like partner dancing.

For our clients using Klaviyo, it’s called a Flow.

Updated: January 11, 2021
Published: March 1, 2020

Sign up to our newsletter

big changes start with small steps

let’s make it happen, working together!