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Do you feel like you have exhausted all avenues when it comes to gaining customers' attention? Not getting your message across in your Instagram captions or wanting to be a little more personal with the customers? Email marketing may be what your customer needs to build the business-to-customer relationship you are looking for.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is a powerful marketing channel, a form of direct marking as well as digital marketing which helps promote your products and services. It can help make customers aware of your latest offers, seasonal promotions or exclusive discount. It can prove to play a pivotal role in your marketing strategy as it generates leads, and brand awareness, build relationships and keep customer engagement between purchases.
Email Marketing seems to be an option on everyone's website at the moment but just because they have the option doesn't mean it is always successful. Based on data by MailChimp the average open rate across all industries is 21.80% and the average click-through rate is 2.78%. These numbers may seem low considering how successful email marketing is but that is because it is only an effective tool when applied correctly. Here are a few things to consider when starting out in email marketing.
The first step is getting people to sign up.
Be truthful and tell the customer what they will get from signing up, is it more information, a discount, or improving their personal or business life?
You also need to make this section of your website eye-catching if they can't find the area to sign up why would they want to do it in the first place?
Appearance is key
Think about how many emails you receive on a daily basis, how many do you open let alone read? Therefore you need to make it interesting from the get-go. Punchy, straightforward subject lines in the email are key as it is the first thing people will see when they choose if they want to open your email or not. Research shows that 47% of people open an email based not the subject line so don't let it go to waste!
Be aware of what time you want to send emails to customers. Do you have an audience that sits down to their emails at 8 am Monday- Friday or are they more likely to take time out at the end of the day to see what you are offering?
The purpose of your email
There are many different forms of email marketing and you need to pick the one that is going to be the most effective for your business. Are you looking to provide a little more business information with a newsletter? These take a longer time to create and don't tend to have the conversion to the customer that you may be looking for. There is order follow-up, this can be an opportunity to ask them for feedback or to request a review which can go towards gaining future customers. People may be more likely to open this as it relates to their purchase. Emailing Inactive Customers can prove beneficial as life may have gotten in the way of them engaging with you and your email has provided a reminder. you may be able to gain sales by setting up an email for abandoned shopping carts. If the customer has entered all their details but has not processed the order a simple reminder email may encourage them to return and complete it.
Though email marketing can be successful for many companies it is also to remember it doesn't work for everyone. It seems like our inboxes are becoming fuller by the day and people may not want to sign up for what they feel is more spam. Due to its popularity, it means your company isn't the only one providing it so be aware of the competition. Use it to your advantage and sign up for their emailing list to see what they are putting out there. Email marketing can prove to be very time costly for what seems like a little reward, it can be a learning experience but the more time and effort you put into perfecting it the more successful it will be.