Some companies just rock at email campaigns. They’ve thought about their audience and what they need, as well as how to deliver these needs in an effective – but not pushy – manner.
How many times a day do you sigh at generic and dull subject lines or in-your-face “Amazing! Once in a Lifetime!” offers that will be repeated in a month? Chances are you just hit delete and regret ever subscribing.
There are lots of email marketing tools out there for your usage, but not everyone makes the best of them. Here’s some great ideas for you so you too can rock your customers’ inboxes.
- Make sure you have an engaging and compelling subject line. Reading “Newsletter from Company X” for the zillionth time will just get your email consigned to the wastebasket. “80% discount!” or “New Loyalty Scheme!”. Anything as long as it says something new.
- Make sure the content of the email actually suits your audience. There’s no point targeting 20-something men with parenting-related deals or soft furnishings, for example. Likewise, you need to remember that these 20-somethings probably will want to buy a baby sling in five years…
- Keep your branding consistent throughout the campaign to reinforce your company’s look and feel with your customers. You might not really have the time to fine-tune your email campaigns, so you could engage the services of specialist companies like www.extravision.com, who can give you help and advice.
- Give customers the Safe List option. This is quite a biggie, as it shows customers that you’re sensitive to their almost universal dislike of overpowering mailshots. This tells you that they want to receive promotions, so you know who to focus on more.
- Ask for a few customer details, like interests, family members’ ages and birthdays. By doing this, you can send out discount vouchers for age-appropriate birthday presents. This is usually quite welcome and promotes customer loyalty.
- There’s got to be a call-to-action. Buy Now! The best email marketing campaigns take readers straight to the action, without asking them to wade through loads of possibly irrelevant stuff first.
- You can set automated triggers for purchases. If a customer looks at a review, or a preview, they’re more likely to buy the item if there’s a convenient “buy it now” button next to it.
- Encourage the customer engage with your company. Set up quizzes or polls, for example. Offer discount codes for reviews, or small gifts in exchange for referring a set number of friends. You can have the best email in the world, but if there’s no payback for your audience, they’ll just pass on by.
- Deadlines are very important. You need to give the customer enough time to actually decide the make a purchase and then actually do it. However, if the deadline is several weeks ahead, it’s likely to be all forgotten about. A book company had great success with a trivia quiz campaign that lasted ten days. There was one question every day, with discount coupons offered to each customer who got all ten questions right. Genius!