Email Marketing
Email marketing can help you stay in touch, improve retention and create repeat sales. Often this is one of the easiest and quickest wins for many organisations.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is as old as email itself and it’s simply the process of using email as a communication platform to develop a relationship with someone, often with a focus such as turning a prospect into a customer.
The beauty of email marketing is that the entire process can be almost completely automated and once set up correctly it can have a profound impact on the entire customer journey.
Back in may 2018 there was a major change in the data protection laws in the UK – GDPR which required all businesses to actually be able to prove they have permission to hold data on consumers and individuals. This was a good thing, although it still hasn’t stopped some organisations from using email to spam people, it has brought a better focus on how to use email as a marketing channel.
Just to be really clear, email marketing is a permission based activity that involves sending relevant, timely and useful information to the user on the subject or topic they have knowingly agreed to receive.
Email marketing is not about buying a list, sending a bulk email out to unsuspecting people, hoping that some of them may find it relevant, with a few clicking and buying. That’s spam.
What are the benefits of email marketing?
Everyone, well almost everyone uses email. Even my dad, at 84 years old has an email account and my 12 year old and uses it. Due to its wide adoption and multi generational relevance, email is often rated as the most effective marketing channel, beating social media and even SEO.
So building email marketing into your digital marketing strategy is important, and because you can automate it, it’s a no brainer. Email marketing has many uses, but here are few of the most popular ones that I’ve been involved with throughout the years.
1) Customer retention
Email is one of the best ways to keep in touch with your current customers, telling them about new products or services, and can be used to encourage recommendations and referrals as well as repeat sales.
2) Lead generation
People will often be happy to give you their email address in exchange for learning a new skill, or getting privileged information, a white paper, email course or a discount of a product. Once you have their email address, you can follow up with them, turning a prospect into a customer.
3) Onboarding
Have you ever bought something and then thought, what happens now? Having a thoughtful onboarding process via email reduces admin and helps ensure the customer feels like they’ve been welcomed.
4) Cart abandonment
If you run an ecommerce business, then it’s painful to see customers that have abandoned their purchase just before payment. Email can be used to persuade customers to return and complete the purchase.
5) Reviews
You’ve delivered a great service and you’ve got a happy customer. Email marketing can then be used to automate the review process. When done correctly, asking for recommendations, referrals and reviews is absolutely no effort!
Icebreaker
In order to find out if we’re the right kind of fit for each other, I ask all clients to fill out my icebreaker. This allows me to follow up with meaningful responses so that we can get down to roots of where you need help.
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How email marketing works
Before you get started with email marketing you need to remember, you are a guest in their inbox. Someone has taken the time to sign up, open your emails and read them. Good manners and being on your best behaviour at all times is essential. Remember, it’s only one click to unsubscribe.
Get permission
With your current customers you may already have permission to email them (it’s worth checking), but for people visiting your website often you’ll have to give them an incentive to sign up. This can be in the form receiving industry specific news, getting privileged information, a white paper, email course or a discount on a product. Get permission and be explicit in what they will receive.
Be personal
Depending on the information you have available, always use a personal greeting in the heading and subject line of the emails you send. Emails that use first name personalisation have been shown to have a 45% better chance of being opened and read. Also, it’s just common courtesy to greet someone by name, isn’t it?
Don’t change the rules
It’s time to deliver what you promised them. If you promised monthly news, do it. If they are expecting daily product updates, send them, but don’t go changing the rules. Someone who signed up for a monthly digest isn’t going to be happy when you start emailing them every day, or start the hard sell. You’re trying to build and maintain a relationship here with a real person, so make sure you follow through and do what you said you were going to do.
Keep your objectives in mind
For many the goal of email marketing is just about good communication, however If you’re trying to get someone to complete an action, such as buy a product, or sign up to a paid service, then make sure your email campaign is planned with this in mind. A thoughtful and gentle approach normally works best, rather than a hard close. Remember, email marketing is a conversation with real people, and no one likes pushy sales tactics.
Automate and review
The beauty of email marketing is that much of it can be automated. Ok, up to the minute news can’t be set up in advance, but most email campaigns can be set up with a sequence of emails that go out automatically at a set time and date, or based on a trigger from the user. Get this right and you’ve built a great system for communicating with customers, with very little effort from you going forward.
Segment and automate based on reactions
So to begin with you may only have their name and email address, but over time you can build up a profile of them based on their clicks and interactions with your website. Segmenting and automating based on customer responses leads to an even more personal and targeted message, one which the subscriber will love.
Always respect the unsubscribe
There is nothing worse than hitting ‘unsubscribe’ and then still getting emails, it has the total reverse effect of building relationships. So before that happens always ask subscribers for feedback or what you can do better and improve what you send. If and when they do click ‘unsubscribe’ make sure that your software removes them permanently from your mailing list – for good.
Frequently asked questions
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How I can help
I’ve set up over 100 different email marketing accounts for customers, from engineering and manufacturing newsletters, through to lead and prospect building campaigns and ecommerce store communications. I’ve worked with a number of tools including Campaign monitor, Mailchimp, Hubspot and integrated with at least half a dozen more. If you’re looking for some free friendly advice on how to use email marketing for your organisation, just drop me a line, i’d be delighted to have a chat.
