Chris Harris

LinkedIn Emails - 3 Tips for Retention Success

A little smile came over my face when I saw the latest email communication from LinkedIn last week. It wasn’t particularly exciting - subject was “Top Headlines in Online Media”, but I opened it anyway. And what I got was the most popular industry articles of the week via LinkedIn. Nice.

LinkedIn seem to have a good knack at sending me stuff I actually want to read, and I particularly like it when I receive interesting recommendations via email - and hats off to them - I remember the challenges with intelligent email marketing in my previous jobs as many different departments are involved. But I think there are some great tips you can take to your business from LinkedIn…

1 - Targeted content

LinkedIn know I work in online media, so deliver me articles relevant to this. Knowing my interests and being able to use them in email marketing becomes a powerful retention tactic

2 - Content Feed

To provide the ‘hook to click’ the content feed for each article provides an image, title, short summary, and number of shares indicating how popular the article is. Also they provide a call to action ‘read full article’, making it really simple to understand what I do next.

3 - Friendly, useful copy

LinkedIn use suggestive copy to frame the email well - “To read between meetings” - it’s not the hard sell to get you to click, its more conversational in tone, but provides a context for why I should find the email useful. It plays nicely on the assumption that I want to stay abreast of the latest industry news despite my hectic schedule. Where possible you should inject a tone of voice that reflects your brand values.

I’ve used LinkedIn on many occasions for best practices on retention marketing, but there are others who are harnessing their customer data to provide relevant email marketing. Have you seen any brands that have caught your eye recently?