should you include personal stuff, like what's going on in your life, in your emails to your list?

most marketers don't seem to, probably on the basis that they want to concentrate on the "marketing message", which I can understand and appreciate, and I do it myself on most emails, but then there are days where I just gotta share...

I keep track of the click thorugh rates for all the emails I send out (yet another spreadsheet), partly so I can see which subject headers work well, and partly for tracking the conversion ratio, as well as trying to judge the level of "interest" in a topic, and I have noticed that click through rates do seem to go up when I've included something about what's going on in my life.

I steer clear of doing it just for the sake of it and limit "personal stuff" to when there's something vaguely interesting to write about, or something that fits in with (or compliments) the subject of the message/promotion.

Apparently one of the favorites of my long standing subscribers was last summer when we had the flooding in Cheltenham and (long story shortish) I ended up ingesting some water that I shouldn't have, as the water system was still full of some pretty nasty stuff..

So I decided to use the old Canooists trick for killing bacteria in the tummy when the get a mouthfull of water from a dirty river, drink lots of coke.

The problem is I'm not a fan of coke, unless it's watered down with vodka, lots of vodka...

I received quite a few emails the next day asking whether it had worked and whether I was ok...

I guess at the end of the day it's "my style" and it helps me to enjoy writing to my subscribers, I know it's going to irritate some people, but then they should probably look for someone else's list to be on, someone who's style they enjoy..

I hope that for those that enjoy "my style" it helps them to identify with me and understand more about who I am.

Update:

earlier today I received an email from a fellow "internet marketer", although I'dnot heard of him before, who was pee'd off at how often I have been sending out emails and how long some of them are.

I can understand the objection of "too many emails", it's always a fine line to tread and sometimes, when there are a LOT of good new products and services being launched, it can be very difficult not to end up sending out an email almost every day.

But then I do get at least 2 or 3 JV resquests every single day, so it takes quite a whileto actually filter out the good stuff and sometimes I do end up with more than 2 or 3 products to promote each week.

Then there's other weeks, like this one, where I find a product that's so good I want to dedicate more than one email to it..

Today's email was a bit long, in fact I ended up splitting it in to three seperate posts on my Internet Marketing Blog, but it was all stuff that I believe my subscribers needed to know about and would find valuable.

In fact one of the products I even recommended they use someone else's affiliate link if they decided to buy, and it's the second time in two days I've done that.

I'll post more about why soon.

Sometimes the emails I send out need to be longer than I'd prefer, and longer than the standard "this is cool, check it out here" promo emails many marketers seem to send out, simply because I want to give my readers enough detail to be able to decide whether it's right for them without having to visit the salespage and spend 10 minutes reading that.

I believe writing a long email in that situation is actually providing my readers with real value, but I guess the old saying is right..

"you can't please all of the people all of the time!"

Am I wrong in my belief?

I'd be interested in your opinion...

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