I recently read an interesting post over on Jack Vinson's blog, When Silos Work. It got my attention because, for the longest time, the big push has been to remove silos and aggregate information into usable, meaningful and accessable knowledge.
But Jack's post refers to a post by Kaye Vivian who's talking about why she had to create a personal silo. It's because there's so much information she can't process it all and needs to choose what she focuses on. So, she's created her own personal silo to interact with the information and people she chooses.
It occurs to me that we all have personal silos or ways we segment the information we deal with and manage the people we talk with. Take a look at your email structure of folders and how you handle your inbox. What messages do you choose to save? Which ones do you delete without reading? I'm betting it's the ones that share knowledge.
I do it a certain way based on importance and meaningfulness to me, and future value (if I might need to refer to it again). I'll bet if you boil down how you read your email, you do something similar. So, what do you think your leads are doing?
Instead of sending a self-serving email message, try to make the communication truly useful to your leads. Don't save all the good stuff for after they click. Give them something worthwhile that will make them add you to their personal silos.
Try a test for a few days and be really conscious of what you consider meaningful and why. Then put yourself in your lead's shoes and think about what they would find valuable. Many people think that it's all about getting the click throughs. But, with longer buying cycles, it's quite often about getting invited into their personal silos. It may take a number of email messages (think 6 - 10) before they are actually motivated to click.
But, if they're not reading at all, then they won't ever click.
