by Laura McLoughlin
Every day we will send multiple emails and receive many more. We will check our smartphone regularly, sifting and sorting the messages we want to achieve or not. Email offers a direct and instant connection with your target market, which has the potential to create a lifelong relationship and future sales. Therefore, email is the perfect way to maximise sales, whether you are up-selling or cross-selling. Here we explain more about the ways to maximise the power of email for your marketing and why it is so important.
An essential cog in the wheel
No marketing method can be viewed in isolation in today’s hypermedia world. The best approach will cross channels, and the view of your business will be carefully crafted so that wherever they look, the customer will get the same message. However, email offers something more powerful. It can provide you with a link with your customer that personalizes all these different silos.
There are software packages available that allow you to send emails in response to your customer’s actions. For instance, if the customer puts something in the basket on your website but does not complete the transaction, you can send them an email that prompts them to make that final click. Equally, if a client calls your customer services, you can then send an email that requests feedback on the level of satisfaction with the interaction. It is even possible, with some advanced packages, to send out an email to the customer when they geographically close to your bricks and mortar store.
Such an omnichannel approach is best facilitated through email because the messages arrive directly and instantly to the customer’s smartphone.
Powerfully personal
The omnichannel approach to marketing is a means of creating a personal relationship with a customer. In an ideal world, you would know the name of every customer, know something about their life and be able to respond to this with the perfect solution to a pain point. The elixir of a single customer view that helps a large organization act like the old corner shop of an earlier world can be achieved with email.
You can use email software to address your customer by name. The subject line of the email can offer a compelling summary of the solution you are offering, which will hopefully respond to the recognized needs of the demographic. Each email can include a call to action, which will prompt a click through to your website. Although you cannot directly ask about their Aunty Maisie and how she is recovering in hospital, you can make emails more bespoke than most other forms of marketing – especially if you use stories from your business, as communicating with a friend.
Strong returns on the investment
Putting together a powerful email journey does require a significant investment. You will need a specialist copywriter who can garner the appropriate emotion at precisely the right point in the journey. You will also want to organically grow your email address list, so your message is welcome in the inbox of your customers.
There are cheaper ways of using email marketing. You can send out mass emails to addresses you have bought. You will likely end up in the spam folder, and if you don’t, you could be viewed as an intrusion in the day of your prospects. Such is the level of sensitivity to online privacy today, you could do more damage to your company than any potential benefits.
However, asking permission to send emails and making the messages relevant to the life of the client – you could immediately solve a problem for a customer and garner gratitude for the ease of communication and continued connection. You are on the way to building that cherished sense of community, which could ultimately lead to word-of-mouth testimonials.
Powerful metrics and the chance to evolve
It is not just that email software packages can manage your email addresses and the sending of messages, it can also feedback analytics that can help you adapt. Significant marketing campaigns can take months to develop and then even more time to feel the impact on the choices you have made. In contrast, emails will be received instantly. The client will react to this, usually within a day, and this reaction will be fed back into the software.
The analytics you receive are varied. You can see how many of the emails have been opened, how many have resulted in a click by the customer and then how many have achieved a sale. This is the minimum data you will receive but still it is a significant amount of data and will allow you to quickly work out if an email campaign is working or not.
The fast feedback will permit you the chance to be agile. You can withdraw a campaign that is making no impression and try something different. You have the chance of responding in real-time to the constant feedback you are receiving from your customers.
The decision-makers inbox
Finally, though probably most crucially, you can get your message directly to the budget-holder. This direct contact with the decision-maker is essential if you’re a business-to-business organizations, as you can seek to communicate with the person who has a problem to solve. An email to a general contact address needs to be forwarded by an administrator who might not necessarily know who would care about the message. Therefore, with the right list of email addresses, you can communicate directly with the person that matters to you.
Laura McLoughlin is a Digital PR with past experience as a website editor and writer. Away from the keyboard, you can find her binging nature documentaries and dreaming up travel plans. Laura works with Glaze Digital in Northern Ireland.
