Using email on a daily basis has become too commonplace to start perceiving it as an important business tool. Yet, it can become just that with a tweak or two and this post will help you do it in the easiest possible manner. . Email marketing as a term is self-explanatory – it is about sending emails. But – for the purpose of promoting your business. We will tell you more about email as a tool for connecting with, and nurturing your clients, while building new and reinforcing existing business relations with them.
Build Your Contact List with Promotional Offers
In order to create an audience you’ll have to first obtain their permission to receive emails from you. By acquiring your customers’ emails, your costs of doing so amount to zero, yet you are significantly increasing your reach. If you consider sending them emails before asking for their approval or even against it, you’ll have your emails treated as unwanted spam. Do not despair over having your offer rejected – people who do not want to receive your emails are those who would hardly buy your products/services in the first place.
So, who do you send your emails to? Start with the people visiting your shop, or already using your product. Build your contact list with the help of opt-in forms which represent web users’ confirmation of interest in your service or product, as well as their approval to be contacted in the future for the purpose of receiving new information about your business offers. You can include these with your regular loyalty cards and accompany them with promises of promotional offers, gift ideas and product announcements in exchange for email subscription
These attractive offers that act as an incentive for people to sign up and ares called lead magnet. They can take many forms, with the limit being your readiness to create attractive content such as a shipping discount offer, promotional video or a coupon for shopping at your store. In this manner, your email recipients will feel that they get something in return for their giving you access to their inbox.
A Most Welcoming Email
You should not underestimate designing a quality welcome email in which you inform your customers that they have been included as part of your email list. This email will have to hit the right nerve with the user upon its first reading, not unlike love at first sight, so make sure not to mess this up:
- Your welcome email should feature a narrative style that you’ll have to be consistent about. Subscribers will certainly expect some basic information in it, and these should be related to informing them about what content they can expect in your future correspondence and how often they’ll receive updates.
- Do not forget to include basic information about your store, company or service you provide, together with the descriptions of the most popular products.
- These emails should also include an invitation to the subscriber to look you up on social media as part of your unified marketing effort.
Send Your Customers emails Upon The Occurrence of Special Events.
Personalization can go SUCH a long way. Pay attention to your customers and seek for excuses to do so. Events that are a good excuse for sending an email could be:
- Your customer’s birthday or other special event
- Follow up email after making a purchase – asking for feedback can go a long way
- Instructions on how to use a product they’ve purchased
- If you know your main customers well, send them a personal email to update them on new products or services which you think they’ll be interested in. Don’t forget to add that personal touch to those emails.
Take a look at this example of an email which leverages a customer’s personal event:
Subject: [First Name], we have a great offer for you
Hi [First Name],
Happy birthday from all of us at fiction bike store. We’re delighted to offer you 50% off any purchase during your birthday month.
We hope you’re having a super day and are looking forward to greeting you in person.
See you soon!
Sue from Fiction bike store.
OK, Pay Attention But Do Not Swamp Them
One of the key reasons people may unsubscribe from your mailing list is actually their feeling that they are receiving too many emails. According to at least one credible research 45% of subscribers who unsubscribe felt that they were emailed too often. At the same time, you need to decide what constitutes sending mails “too often” as this perspective can be highly individual.
Image Credit: Technology Advice
Sending Great Newsletter
Preparing and sending great newsletters is an important component of your email marketing plan. Once again, it is the content and the sending frequency that will decide your ultimate outcomes in this segment.
- You can start small, by trying to come up with creative email subject lines that will quickly pique your reader’s attention.
- As for the content itself, it should not be always focused on product promotion or sales pitches. No matter how convinced of the quality of your product you are, people will start ignoring your emails if they find them all too predictable in terms of the content.
- The best approach to this is to make your newsletter subscribers think that they are actually receiving something from you, be it a promotional offer, gift idea or even relevant research you found online.
Make your newsletters focused on a particular topic. If you try to cover too many themes at the same time, the thread holding its structure together will come undone.
A Personal Touch
Segmentation is the practice of dividing up your email list according to specific categories of the users you want to target. You can segment your email lists into various groups, such age, gender, profession etc. In this manner, you can make your communication better targeted at certain groups of users.
Automate Your Marketing
If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of things you need to juggle in your head, do not give it too much thought, as the good new is that some of these processes can be automatized. Simple marketing automation rules, for example, can be used for sending emails automatically to new subscribers or your regular customers. These can be set to trigger automatically, once a user subscribes to your list, clicks on a particular link, buys from you, or undertakes any other appropriate action. Their content needs to be created in advance and you can also segment specific groups of people from your email list to receive automatic emails based on scheduled time intervals, such as days, weeks or months.
In order to put this to good use, you’ll need a quality email marketing solution that will allow you to group your subscribers, manage your contacts and send emails automatically based on what you determine as your subscriber’s buyer’s journey. Make sure to check some of the available options before you press forward with any segment of your email marketing campaign.
Wrap-up
You probably send emails on regular basis without considering this service a hidden champion of marketing efforts. Everything starts with making your future subscribers see the value of giving them their email address to you. You need to offer them something of value, accompanied by user-friendly and visually attractive optin form for subscription. Once you include them on your list, you’ll need to balance out your need for self-promotion and their desire for quality content offered by your newsletter.
Segmentation of users into categories can help, together with an effort to make these emails more personal. Finally, much of your efforts can be automated, such as sending welcome or regular emails, which necessitates the use of email marketing services. In any case, do not be afraid of treating email as something more than an equivalent of an electronic messenger pigeon. It can pave your initial steps in the marketing world with pure gold.
