Email marketing is a booming business throughout the world. Though in Australia emailing is often a misunderstood subject (for some unknown reason!)
If you can answer yes to any of these questions then read on…
1. You have a list of email addresses of clients that have bought from you in the past.
2. You have a database that contains the details of people that have contacted you but not bought from you.
3. You are willing to invest a little time and maybe a little money to get a list put together of previous contacts.
4. You would like to increase your sales enquiries through a more effective use of these contacts.
Yes? Great, read on!
Email marketing gets a bad wrap sometimes. I think it is because most businesses have seen or experienced a dodgy overseas company. You know the ones – it’s those who can get us onto page 1 of Google within a week. Or maybe improve our under-performing website and increase traffic to it by 300% in 2 weeks.
Not to mention the seedier side of emails like viagra and other online scams.
Rules for Email Marketing Success
The truth is that Email Marketing can be a raving success. But it has to fulfil a couple of obligations.
1. Be of interest to the recipient. Whatever you are sending has to be relevant to them. You wouldn’t send an email to a school about the latest changes to immigration laws for example.
2. Don’t send emails too often or too infrequently. Establish a pattern – maybe the same day of the week 3 weeks apart. Or perhaps the first Tuesday of each month. If the recipient comes to expect the email they tend to be willing to receive it.
3. Choose your subject line wisely. Don’t lure them in with a juicy subject line that actually does not relate to the email at all. You will lose their trust.
4. Be careful of SPAM legislation – ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority). Before embarking on ANY marketing campaign it is worth checking out the legislation and you can do that here – http://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Marketers/Anti-Spam/Ensuring-you-dont-spam/spam-consent-ensuring-you-dont-spam-i-acma
ACMA have sharp teeth and they aren’t afraid to use them. They flex their muscles often. If you are using a company to set up and send your campaign they should be able to guide you.
The Email Goldmine
An under-utilised database of email addresses is a potential goldmine. If you have acquired email data through a sales enquiry that data is pure gold!
Keeping in touch with people who have already bought from you just makes good sense, doesn’t it? If they were happy with your product or service and have no reason not to use you again then why wouldn’t you remind them that you are there? Why wouldn’t you want to keep in the forefront of their minds? Do you want to ensure that when they need your product or service you are immediately who they think of?
You don’t have to be a pest – in fact we recommend against that! An email once a month telling them about your latest offer, or asking their opinion on something is unlikely to result in them regarding you as a stalker.
In fact quite the opposite. You keeping in touch with your past clients with creative emails reinforces your usefulness to them.
If you utilise the skills of a creative copywriter and a skilled marketer you can really make a difference to response levels. And if you do it right we can pretty much guarantee it will get you the best ROI (return on Investment) than any other marketing activity you engage in.
What’s even better than that is you can set up an entire campaign – maybe 4 or 5 emails over a six-month period. You can do this now and then not need to give it another thought, until the responses come rolling in of course!
Using automation with emails
If you use the services of a company to do this automation then they will encourage you to bring your other advertising and marketing activities in line. The message you are sending by email should reflect or be reflected by your other online and offline activities. This will ensure your message is not confused and your targets are hearing the same message repeated which will give it credibility!
Be smart about what you are sending and don’t always be selling because few people actually like being “sold” – give them useful information or topical news. This will ensure a far higher level of engagement and fewer unsubscribes.
If you would like a chat about how email marketing can make a difference to your business then drop us a line.