Email Marketing; how to get the most out of it.
How many emails do you delete each day? Are you someone who has created a separate email address for all the spammy sign up’s and logins?
Are there any brands that you like getting emails from, I can count about maximum 3 brands who’s emails I enjoy opening up and reading. As we are going through a cleanse this year, I am personally unfollowing people and brands that don’t inspire positivity hence wanting to declutter my inbox as well. Let’s talk about how you can be more effective with your email marketing.
If you don’t have anything useful to say, don’s say anything at all. People are already swamped with work and life, we all struggle to keep up and take time out. Let’s respect each others boundaries when it comes to emails. Not one set planned strategy can work for all businesses for improving your email marketing but there are steps that you can take to figure out what will be most effective for your campaigns and automated triggers.
Subscribers | Sign-ups
How many subscribers do currently have on your email list? Do you want to increase your monthly sign-ups? 🙋🏽♀️. Let’s say you don’t have many customers on your current email list, what can you do to improve your monthly sign-ups?
Promoting sign-ups on your website and social channels, with a particular value-add encouraging consumers to sign-up by making it obvious. BE BOLD with it.
- You can easily highlight sign-ups, through offering benefits on your website more clearly. Potentially consider adding a cool pop up to your website for a limited time, making visitors aware that you are offering a benefit for sign-ups. You can also be more subtle by adding a sign-up button on your website header or have create a sign-up banner promotion.
- What can you offer your customers? This depends on what you are able to provide, considering the cost versus the value add to customers looking at long-term customer retention. Can you offer free shipping, coupons, free documents, a free class, a giveaway sign-up or something more exclusive that would make potential customers want to sign-up. This is entirely up to you, get creative with it.
- Keep it easy, straight forward and simple. The more complicated the steps are the less likely someone will want to sign-up. People are busy, keep it quick and clear.
- You can also make create a sense of urgency, share the promotional sign-up on your social channels and let everyone know when it ends. (“Get it before the end of this month or 3 more days to go”etc.) Create the sense of urgency, consider how long the promotion is financially feasible & also testing out the engagement and effectiveness. Evaluate, change and improve by testing and changing your approach each month, until you find the best method for you and your customers.
Customer Emails
So your not a Designer, no worries most website have built in email templates that you can utilise to slot in your images colours and branding. You can also sign-up to Mailchimp or any of the many other options out there. As always it’s great to get some inspiration from Pinterest to see what other brands are doing.
- Let’s use a case study for this one: I recently provided a one month course to one of my clients helping them streamline their Business, marketing and streamline their communication and goals going forward. They had two segments that needed to be targeted. One being their customers, the other being their creative community.
- Customer CTA: (Call to action) Give me something! Engage with me. Show me what you are all about. Let me know what is new, make me feel special.
Send out an email that you would want to open up. Talk to your team and or friends show them what you have in mind and get some feedback, make the email the best you can for your customers. Make it engaging, add blog links interesting insights, giveaways, sales , new items or anything interesting that you are doing doing or planning to do. Teach your audience something or tell them something new, the more personal you can make it the better.
Evaluate your emails, test a few different designs and customer click through — see which month received the most clicks and engagements through your website analytics and keep changing the email designs to improve the customer experience and sales. Drive the emails back to your website by tactfully driving it back to sales. Think of a referral program that you can offer, or loyalty program to keep your customers coming back. Always think long-term relationships over short term gains.
Vendors, Partners, Client Emails
Now besides your customers, you also need to keep your vendors, business partners and or community up to date, involved and aligned on communication and sales. Email segmentation, building up separate lists so that you can easily send out separate emails for customers and or partners.
- For your clients and or partners, say thanks once in a while. Show them results, get them aligned on deals or onboard with new upcoming projects. Stay in touch with them, create online events and discussion to improve the relationship, come up with new effective ideas and maximise the partnerships.
- Referring back to the case-study where my client needed to grow her creative community. Her emails would be most effective if she writes creative ideas each month, hosts online virtual events to align with all the creatives that she represents. Plan out different activations through email’s getting the community as a group to more effectively drive sales and promote each others work.
- At the end of the day they can work together in creating inspiring work and driving her business goals for CSR to improve their local community together. Just by letting them know what is going on and giving them the opportunity to get involved.
I’t is so important to stay focussed on your goal, remaining consistent in your email message and branding. Avoid offering too many items at once, rather plan out ideas each month to promote across the board. Always keep things simple, clear and refer back to your customer feedback, analytics and overall sentiment to improve your customer experience. Optimise the outcome of campaigns by testing and reinventing your ideas, so that they reflect your brand, engage with customers, converting your marketing efforts into sales.
Email notifications
Besides focussing on email campaigns it’s also important to look carefully at your customer’s overall purchase journey, making sure you have covered all aspects of their experience.
- When you have something special going on, let your customers know. They might be having a busy week, people are not just popping over to your website you need to drive them to it through social media, emails etc. Don’t let them miss out on your sale, giveaway promote it.
- I love getting a thank you email after shopping, it makes me feel safe. Especially when they give me more information to track my order or let me know customer service is there for me if I need them.
- I would say I am personally not to fond of abandon cart emails, but when they get back to me with a special I can’t refuse or reminder that it’s free shipping I might pop back to the website and give them a second chance.
There is no one rule, and it is always good to test your customers by creating emails you think they would appreciate. Sometimes just showing them you are passionate can get them roped inn to be a loyal customer the key is communicating al that you are doing through all the channels you have to your disposal. Be respectful with the emails you send out, customer trusted you enough to let you inn, don’ let them regret it.
I hope that this article was helpful, if you want to know more about email Marketing stay tuned PodCast coming up soon to answer some questions from different individuals to see how to help them streamline their goals.
PS. Writing this email at the airport in Hong Kong, waiting for my test results prior to my 14 day hotel quarantine. 👩🏼💻🥂
Additional resources READ MORE:
Email Marketing is not dead | Guides and Benefits for Email Marketing | Shopify all you need to know about Email Marketing |Samples of effective email campaigns
