If you are reading this, you probably are familiar with the concepts of email marketing. Yeah? Well, if you aren’t, help yourself out with of Email Marketing intro. Now, back to the crux of the matter. As a small business, you probably want to stack up as many customers/clients as possible…and you have heard Email can help you achieve that. Or that Email is way more effective than the social media campaigns you currently run for your business.
Well, while that might be true, you may end up frustrated when your Email marketing strategy doesn’t yield the expected results for your business like others have claimed it to work for theirs. You should understand Email could probably be failing you because you aren’t doing it right.
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Whatever strategy you have planned for your email marketing campaign, ensure you are doing one or more of the following:
Offer Opt-in/Sign-up Incentives
One of the most important start off point in Email marketing is getting people to subscribe to your business and growing your mailing list.
While this may seem herculean of a task, it actually isn’t rocket science. You have done a good job getting visitors to your website. But you don’t just let them leave like that will you?
Thing is, when a person visits your website, they came for something: information, files, multimedia, etc. You can offer related articles, pdf document, or files as a “Thank You” bonus for visiting your website.
Or better yet, on a product review page, offer to send a coupon that qualifies them for a % price slash in their mailbox. “Email only deals” is also a great way to build up your mail list.
In addition, since email and social media work hand-in-hand, you can also share email-exclusive deals and discounts in your social media pages to increase opt-in. Mind you, the incentive must relate and be relevant to the product or services your business is offering.
Tell them about your business
According to OnMerit Marketing, after a new (potential) customer has enlisted to your mailing list, introducing yourself and your business has proven to be an effective step in growing your small business. Jumping straight to selling your product or service is a no-no – let the customer get acquainted with your business.
Engage your customers, build up a relationship, inform them about services and products you offer, why you think they would need it, and how you will be offering it to them. It is best you do all these in the email containing their “Thank You” incentive (as discussed in the first point above).
Personalization
When sending out contents to you subscribers, customizing the mail to fit each individual recipient has proven to be a useful email marketing strategy. Customization could be in content-wise, name of recipient, demographical, purchase and purchase history etc.
Email Segmentation
While sending out generic mails revolving around deals, discounts, offers etc to all customers and subscribers may get some positive results, segmenting your customers will help with personalization…and in turn, conversion.
Since your mail list contains different people, their needs are also most likely different. And how do you determine each customer’s individual need? Their activity on your website can give you insights.
Say an old buyer buys a shirt on your website, you can send in a recommendation mail about a jean/pant or shoes that will complement the shirt they just bought, while offering a customized discount if they buy within the next 48-hours.
Through the dashboard provided by your email marketing service, you can create a campaign specific to a segment of your users; perhaps customers who have not visited your business within a specified period, or most active customers.
Segmentation ensures you are sending relevant information to your customers. Also, it improves open rate, click through rate, conversion, and reactivity with your mails.
Properly Tailored Content
Content, being the integral part of a mail, should be properly tailored to catch the attention of the reader. Your content should be relevant, the design should be compatible with web and mobile, contain (not too many) visually appealing images, and be of moderate size – no one wants to read a novel in their emails.
Other factors that can improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign include:
- Choosing the best email marketing providers
- Consistency
- Encouraging customers to spread the word on your discounts/offers to family and friends.
- A/B Testing – creating multiple versions of your campaign to see which performs best.
