Why and how you should be doing email marketing
2 Reasons Why:
1. Email Marketing keeps the connection you have generated with your customer/contact/lead alive. After the transaction is over, instead of saying bye forever, you are harvesting the relationship you have created with somebody, and prolonging their experience with your company.
2. The conversion rate of email opens is on average 20%-30%. This may seem low, but that is 30% of people actually reading what you have to say, and in cases when email marketing is done well the percentage is much higher. Compared to a post on Twitter/Facebook where the percentage of your followers who may actually see a post is less than 5% in most cases.
3 Ways How:
1. Use a professional email system to send your email. We prefer Mailchimp (we personally think it is prettier, and we like pretty things), but Aweber is another popular one, and there are more. Using these you can access important analytics, send in bulk with better chance of avoiding the spam folder, and make your emails more than the standard text.
2. Make sure your emails contain valuable content, and aren’t 100% sales focussed. This is really important. Newsletters should never be completely sales focussed, as you want to encourage people to read every one you send, and look forward to receiving them. By offering useful/entertaining content, you build a stronger brand trust with the people receiving them.
3. Gather feedback from your emails by asking people questions and collecting responses. Ask what kind of information people would like to see, and maybe even do a Q and A section. Also keep an eye on analytics, we are addicted to them. See who is clicking on what, and what type of content gets most clicks. Then tweak and improve your emails over time.
What you’ll get from email marketing?
If you can do the above well, and regularly (at least once a month) you’ll create what is called Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA). This means when people think of your industry/service they will think of you first, not your competition. That is a powerful thing.
You can also include links back to your website, or product pages in your email newsletter, and get people to interact with you on your social networks too. If you provide enough value, people will feel indebted to you, and you bet as soon as they are ready to buy, they will at least come to you for a price.
ACTION: If you haven’t already, create an account with Mailchimp or Aweber, have a play about and send a test email to yourself and a few close contacts.
ACTION: Create a list of people you could potentially add to your email list.
ACTION: Schedule sufficient time in your diary to start your first newsletter, remember the longer that you are consistent with this, the more it will work for you. It will also get much quicker over time, once you get use to the software.