When you’re a business owner it’s hard to add yet another thing to your growing pile of responsibilities, but we’re here to tell you about one factor that should be a regular priority in your marketing plan—email marketing. This is another aspect of marketing where consistency pays off. While you may have a full understanding of your products or services, potential customers may not. Email marketing gives you the opportunity to share relevant information about your company, services, and prospects so that your customers have a clear idea of what you do and are consistently reminded that you are there to do it for them.
Consistent email marketing is important to your business sales for other various reasons, including educating your potential and existing customers, boosting sales while saving time and money and relationship building with your customers. People don’t want to be blasted with sales spam every week, unless you’re a retail company offering a special coupon or discount. But if you engage them with interesting topics that are relevant to your business or industry, then it becomes useful information that they will eventually start to seek more of. By being consistent you are ensuring that when a customer needs your product or service, your business is top of mind.
Email marketing is one of the most inexpensive ways to stay relevant, reach customers and boost sales. However, nowadays customers want to build a relationship with the companies they buy from and sporadic email marketing doesn’t allow you to gain their attention, or keep them informed. If you’re only emailing a newsletter two or three times a year, you are not keeping the lines of communication open with new or existing prospects. Relationships take time to build, so quality and consistency is required.
A lot of business owners make the mistake of thinking consistent email marketing means a constant sales pitch for your business. We know this may be your end goal, but in order to achieve this, you will need a better method than the traditional sell, sell, and sell mentality. You’re probably wondering exactly what information you should be putting in your email marketing if not to push sales…? The information in your email marketing needs to vary and contain more useful and relevant information that your audience will enjoy reading. As an example, if you are a carpet cleaning company, you will add information that is helpful and relevant to your client base by sharing your experience through various methods like blogs, videos, or infographics. This type of company can gain the attention of their clients by walking them through preventative maintenance, how to remove simple stains, offering tips and tricks for specialized types of carpets, just to name a few. Ask yourself, what type of problems do my clients have? Then share information that will solve their woes.
We know sometimes it can be difficult to think of topics for your email marketing campaigns so we are sharing an infographic 5 ideas on what to send when you’re unsure of what to send. Here is breakdown of them below:
- Rather than trying to sell your subscribers something, try just informing them of a few of your favorite services and how they would benefit from them. You are technically still selling at the end of the day, but this approach you will be speaking in the tone of an expert in your field rather than a car salesman just trying to make commission. To be viewed as an expert, you need to educate them on the industry or product, detailing all sides of it, not necessarily just steering people to your products or services for purchase.
- If you’re having an event or fundraiser, extend an invitation to your customers. This invitation can be used not only for big events, but also as a way to get the word out about smaller activities you have going on. Make sure you include all the necessary information needed to get to your event. (Make sure you include a follow-up on how it went, how much you raised, thanking participants, etc.)
- Encourage people to connect with you outside of their email marketing experience. Use social media buttons to allow people to connect with you on whatever network of their choosing.
- Offer them a sneak preview of what you have in the works. Not only will this give you one email blast, it potentially gives you two because of the official unveiling of your new portfolio, service or product. A sneak preview will leave customers wanting to see more and will be more apt to open additional email blasts sent out if you’ve already caught their interest.
- Last but not least, make sure you send out the official release of a new product or service, share pictures from your most recent event, share trending topics about your industry… It shows that you’re working on new things for your customers and that you keep up to date with your industry.
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