Marketing doesn’t have to be sexy to attract customers, and email certainly isn’t sexy. Some even consider using email for marketing old fashioned. Dowdy as it may seem, using email marketing garners more click-through and sales than any other form of digital marketing, including social media. A study by Responsys showed that retailers have sent 120 percent more marketing emails since a similar 2007 study. Furthermore, a study by Blue Kangaroo showed that 43 percent of adults who receive email said that more than 50 percent of their emails are from marketers.
Creating the email List
To market your wares via email, you must first create a subscriber list. This is something that you must work on constantly; you can’t just create a list then ignore it because up to 30 percent of your contacts may unsubscribe during the year. You can get people to sign up through a link on your website or your social marketing pages. You can also put links to your newsletter in the signature block on all emails you send out, including personal emails and receipts.
If the content of your emails is relevant, people will sign up for your newsletter. Don’t just sell in your newsletters, but provide informational and interactive content, too. If you sell fuel pumps, include articles about fuel pumps, fuel system diagnosis and other relevant information.
Engaging the potential customer
You can’t send a bland email and expect someone to click on it unless that person is highly motivated to purchase the product or service mentioned. You must be careful that you don’t irritate potential customers with spam and irrelevant messages. Have potential customers sign up to your mailing list and track a customer’s behavior so that you send only emails pertaining to that customer’s interests.
Once you have the customer hooked, you have to reel him in. Do this by providing informational and interactive content. According to Inc., over 70 percent of marketers collect information about their customers via surveys. The surveys are forwarded to customers via email and ask them about their experience with the company, such as customer service and questions regarding the customer’s online purchasing experience.
Inc. also stated that click-through rates for emails with something related to Pinterest have a 25 percent higher click-through rate than any other marketing email. Furthermore, 44 percent of marketing emails are opened on a mobile device, so creating a mobile friendly email also garners higher click-through rates.
Marketing venue efficiency
A study by Direct Marketing Association showed that tailored marketing emails garner higher click-through rates than Twitter and Facebook. The study showed that email performs better than social media by a 3-1 ratio when measured by sales per dollar spent on digital advertising.
Put it all together
Once you have an email list started, you need to craft emails. If you promise weekly emails, send something every week without fail. Make sure your content is generated towards your subscribers’ interests. Provide information and interaction with the emails or they may get ditched into the virtual round filing cabinet. Not every email has to have information — some can be marketing your services or products — but be sure to have a higher percentage of interactive or informational content. Even a survey after a purchase gets people to click through your emails and shows that you care about the customer. Customers who feel special will keep coming back.
Originally posted on May 15, 2013 @ 11:59 pm