3 Ways to Show Your Email Subscribers Respect

Show respect for your subscribers, not only because it’ll build “trust and connection,” but because you might as well. 🤷🏽‍♂️ Read on.

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Call me an email-ologist: I study marketing emails for a living.

I answer important, age-old questions like: Why did that subject line make me smile? Why are the 10 links in this email so annoying? Hmm…I feel a disconnect between this email and their brand…Where’s that coming from?

From these questions, one sensation pops up repeatedly: respect. I feel respect — or, equally often, lack of respect — from big brands with big budgets and from tiny, well-intentioned, one- and two-person businesses just trying to find their place in the internet.

For email marketing to work for most businesses, and certainly for small ones, subscribers have to trust; trust comes from feeling respected.

Here are 3 ways to show your subscribers respect.

Step 1: Actually respect them.

Feeling actual respect for your subscribers is the essential precondition for showing it. Respect that’s feigned and believable doesn’t exist.

See and talk to your subscribers as people, not as your future bank balance.

Yes, of course, sell to your list, but don’t forget yourself after you giddily fantasize about how much money your next launch to your list will bring in.

Just as your audience isn’t your future earnings, they’re also not just open rates or A/B test dummies. Treat them as you like to be treated as an email subscriber.

How: With each new subscriber, consider the sentiment of sonder, a made-up word that teaches us a critical concept for empathy: that every other person’s life is complex, relentless, and flecked with moments of joy, just as yours is.

Is your new subscriber debating whether to leave the security of their day job? Struggling with potty training their 4-year-old? Just waiting to dig in to the quiche they made for dinner?

Remind yourself daily there’s a real person at the end of every click and subscribe.

2. Master the art of conversation.

When you join a friend for a coffee chat, you don’t face your friend and vomit out a list of everything you’ve done for the past week. As a good conversationalist, you share a bit about something that’s important to you, then give your friend a chance to reply.

Likewise, in an email, keep it focused; share one thing at a time. As a subscriber, it’s too much to see an email sharing 4 new blog posts and an update on your next event.

Let your subscribers consume your content comfortably by not inundating them with it.

How: In any given email, choose one tiny topic — like how the secret ingredient (it’s black pepper, shh) in your newest chai blend makes the tea zing across your tongue.

Then invite your readers to reply. What do they like about your chai blend? Is it the spicy zing, or the warming scent of cinnamon instead? Do they even know what they like?

3. Leave your ego on Twitter.

In marketing emails, find topics that do more than talk up your products or position yourself as the expert in your field.

Leave your ego on Twitter where it belongs. Think of emails as sharing your interests and skills with your friends.

Using the tea example, you shared why you added black pepper into the blend. You and many customers find it delicious, but surely for some it’ll be too much. Respect that they feel that way, and be secure enough to ask why.

How: Teach and share with your subscribers as you would a friend — with humility and respect for the friend’s knowledge and experience in their own right. Explain your line of thinking, then ask if they agree. Be genuinely curious about their answer.

When you think, “What should I promote or share this week…” Stop. 
Try: “What can I tell my friends about this week?”

Show respect for your subscribers, not only because it’ll build “trust and connection,” but because you might as well. 🤷🏽‍♂️ It takes little effort once you get the hang of it, it feels better for you right now, and it elevates email marketing as a useful strategy for everyone in the long run.

When do you feel respected (or disrespected) by marketing emails? 
What am I missing in this list?