How To Get Started Email Marketing
As an established business, marketing is important. It's what drives in your customers and attracts new clients into your place of operation, whether it's a flashy news articles in your local paper, having billboards down the street highlighting you, targeted social media posts or a personalized email sent right your clients' inbox; these marketing strategies can go a long way to reach your target audience.
Let's start with email newsletters; a short concise graphic filled with information is a great way to reach out and market yourself to your existing clients. Getting them on board can be a tricky start but offering a 10% or 15$ off voucher, a free article, an e-book or service that relates to your business can entice customers to join your newsletter list.
Once on board, a weekly timed email that goes out via an automated process that connects with your client base is ideal. Fun fact: your email only has 3 seconds to capture your audience's attention, so you need to work hard to get it. The email should first state why the customer should be interested in opening the email, do this by creating a catchy subject line that throws off their regular inbox scrolling. This can even include subject lines that make no sense to the email or the viewer, but it makes them say 'what are they talking about?' causing them to click and open it. The first thing they should see in the email header once they open it, needs to reiterate the reason they opened it.
Example 1:
You are an eco-friendly brand that sells physical products such as a reusable water bottle.
Email Subject: A Purple Elephant has been spotted in Africa!
Email Header: Shows an image of your new purple water bottle in Africa (or on an African background). You have named the water bottle model "Elephant" because it holds as much water as a baby elephant's trunk, you will no longer have to fill up on a day hike!
Email Content: Offer - The new Purple Elephant donates 10% to Elephant rescue in Africa. Get the limited edition purple water bottle to show your support today!
Act as if each email you send out is a gift to your clients; create engaging content that relates to their wants and needs providing them with a solution in return for their time and money. If your email strategy consists of only sales emails, try switching it up and adding value emails. Value emails can include things like customer stories using the product or service, reviews or fun interesting things that relate to your brand.
Example: You are a business coaching company that sells their services. Email Subject: Brings her A game every time! Email Header: Shows in image of you laughing or with a client. This email is intended to show your client reviews, one of which stated "She showed me how to run my business and she brings her a game every time!" Email Content: Client testimonials with a link to where they can join an event or community, find out more or sign up!
Avoid having the first thing they see in the email say "Hello [insert name]", "Hey There", Welcome Back!". Start with the hook, the thing that will be interesting enough to keep them reading, think of this as a newspaper title or headline that grabs the readers attention to look for more details.
What about images and graphics? Emails and articles that contain a graphic have 65% higher retention rates, meaning your customers will remember your emails for a longer period of time and with more substance. Make sure that your graphics are not larger than 1.5MB as this may effect load times and will result in your customers closing the email without even seeing a single thing on the page.
Emails can be a great way to thank your clients for being a loyal customer and to displays your best products or services and provide a discount code (when applicable) that incentivizes clients to make a purchase. Take an hour out of your week to create a couple of blogs that will post for the rest of the month, this consistency with your clients will help to gain their trust.
Good luck!