Use email marketing to speak directly to your customers

As a business owner you value the relationship with your customers, and you are always looking to reach new ones.  A great way to cultivate or create these relationships is with email marketing.

But don’t people just delete those emails before reading them?  Some do, and we’ll chat about how to avoid this in a minute.  But first let’s look at a couple of statistics.

According to a study conducted by Merkle, 74% of consumers prefer to receive commercial communications via email.  And the Direct Marketing Association reports that 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message.  There are countless studies that show how effective email campaigns are – go ahead and Google it – I’ll wait here.

See?  It’s hard to argue with these kinds of statistics.  So where do you start?

The first thing you need is permission before sending an email to someone.  This can easily be done by adding an email sign up form on your website so customers can register.  Many email marketing platforms, as well as content management systems, offer plugins that can get this form on your site.

Now, as I promised earlier, let’s talk about how we can get your messages opened.  Here are a few tips to get customers reading and to keep reading when new emails are received.

• People don’t like to open emails from a name they don’t recognize, so use your company name in the from field – not something generic like Info Request.
• Make your subject line focused, direct and short – 50 characters or less is best.
• Use an email marketing platform or service that allows automation.  This means you can create emails that are personalized to your customers.  Not just a one size fits all message.
• Keep the content and design of your email simple.  Most people don’t want to read a message that is just a page full of text.  Keep your paragraphs to a sentence or two and break it up with an image or bullet points.

And after you’ve started sending out these emails, be sure to track the open rate.  This is another feature offered by many platforms.  It’s a great way to see what works for your customers.

If you need help getting started on an email marketing campaign or just want to start staying in touch with your valued customers, send us a message or give us a call at 778.285.2288.