Email Marketing Part 2: 5 Best Practices
Email marketing is the perfect way to stay in conversation with your customers – or the perfect way to turn them off completely. It’s important that your email marketing is nurturing your customer relationships. According to the 2018 Forrester report on transactional email, “Marketers pay a great deal of lip-service to the concepts of ‘customer relationships’ and ‘lifetime value’ but their emphasis on email as an offer-focused channel does little to build either.”
5 best practices to consider in your holiday and 2019 campaign planning:
- Implement triggered email campaigns that respond to your prospect’s or customer’s actions. If they click through on a video, follow up with another video. When they make a lead generation request, be sure to follow up even if (especially if!) they don’t make a purchase. Every time a prospect or customer interacts with you, make sure it triggers an appropriate email follow up. This means using campaign segmentation to effectively respond at each customer decision point, which demonstrates customer knowledge and increases trust.
- Use email to further your relationship with prospects. Every single email you send does NOT have to be sales-oriented. Periodically send out content you think your prospects will enjoy – this can be as simple as a quote with a nice picture. If you post a content-driven blog, tell them when it’s available… without trying to sell them something. Needless to say, this advice applies to your current customers as well.
- When it comes to sales emails, remember that “pain relief” is a bigger motivator than pleasure. You may catch more flies with honey, but when you are selling, make sure your customer knows you understand those flies are driving them crazy – and that your honey is exactly what they need! Position your product or service as an antidote to whatever it is that’s bugging your prospects or customers. More than likely your product or service can solve a number of different problems. This is where segmentation comes in. Track email element responsiveness to learn what problems each customer has, and then use that information to hammer on the exact pain point they want to eradicate.
- Email should offer customers a way to experience your brand, through video, audio, and other digital expressions. Most email marketers are still using flat emails with link clicks as the only option, so get ahead of the curve with interactive templates that have been shown to increase email engagement. It is also critical that your email marketing is optimized for mobile devices – always test how your emails respond on phones and tablets on both android and iPhone platforms.
- Clean up your database. With GDPR and other privacy protections, it’s more important than ever to be sure your database is current and accurate. People need to be able to easily opt-out of your promotions. Try to segment opt-outs as well – and head people off before they opt out of everything. As an example: Look for people who open and click through most of your content emails but ignore your sales emails. Send them an email and let them pro-actively tell you that they only want content. And then only send them content – suppress them from your sales promotions. This way your brand is still out in front of them, and they will think of you when they need your particular good or service.
Email continues to be key to building relationships with customers and prospects, and great email marketing starts with a great CRM. Next time, we’ll look at what pitfalls to avoid in your campaigns, but it really all begins with a solid, clean, responsive database. Give AspenTech CRM a call (866-880-4228) or get on my schedule, https://meetme.so/MarshallKnapp, to set up your complimentary Discovery Session.
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Related Articles:
Email Marketing, Part 1: Alive or Dead?
Hone Your Marketing Department’s Aim
Segmentation Defined
