Contrary to popular belief, email marketing is not “dead”. In fact, it’s still an incredibly effective tool to scope out new business prospects and engage current customers.
However, many business owners struggle when it comes to leveraging email marketing to its greatest potential. Thankfully, as technology develops, so do marketing tactics. This means that there are several new and improved ways to boost your email marketing effectiveness.
Just because you can email customers every single day doesn’t mean that you should. In fact, over-emailing your customers can be a massive turnoff.
Put yourself in their shoes: if you keep receiving generic emails from a business that don’t seem personalized, engaging, or informative, what would you do? Chances are, you’ll either be deleting a lot of messages or you might even go so far as to unsubscribe. If your business comes across as pushy, customers tend to run the other way.
This doesn’t mean that you need to slow your email output to a once-a-month trickle, either. Mostly, it’s important to recognize that each extreme has some pretty hefty drawbacks. Instead of pushing out frequent email blasts, make sure that every piece of communication to a customer has a clear, defined purpose.
Otherwise, you’ll see a lot of emails going unopened. Tailor your content to your customers, email with restraint, and make sure that each email from your business really speaks to your target audience.
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If you’re running a traditional storefront, you know just how hard it can be to acquire customer information. Many shoppers are hesitant, wary, or even outright distrustful of being “added to a list”.
As a result, when you’re building up an email list, you might find that your campaigns are looking a little thin. Whether you need to purchase email lists or find other ways to beef up your contacts, it’s time to expand your reach and find new opportunities. This can take a few forms.
Firstly, incentivize signups. It’s a sad but true reality that very few customers who sign up for a newsletter or email campaign are truly interested in its contents. That is, unless you’re peppering those contents with incentives to get them to click through. From coupons to discounts to exclusive sales, there are all types of ways to incentivize customers.
Second, be transparent about your policies. Let your customers know exactly why you’re collecting their info and don’t be cagey about how you’ll use it; you’ll build trust and loyalty that way. Finally, and this circles back to point one, avoid spamming your customers at all costs.
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Unless you’re emailing back and forth with a work colleague, there’s nothing exciting or engaging about a plain text email. It doesn’t draw the eye, it doesn’t entice the consumer, and it doesn’t come packaged with a strong branding message. That’s why rich media is incredibly important — this is any media with video, audio, or things the user can interact with.
This doesn’t mean you need to go out and hire a programmer to code HTML banners and interactive links, but it does mean that photos, videos, and even GIFs can go a long, long way. Think about what kinds of emails excite you as a buyer and try to translate them into your marketing materials.
Email marketing certainly isn’t dead, but it does require a lot more finesse to perfect. You need to focus your messaging, refine the contents of your email campaigns, and find new and innovative ways to excite your customers. Once you’ve improved your email marketing performance, you’ll find that it can provide some serious bonuses to your business.
