What is good email marketing?
As the name suggests, email marketing is actually just email marketing. This means that you as a company send out emails to your subscribers with the intention of driving traffic - and preferably the converting kind - to your business. This is true for physical stores, but email marketing is especially effective when it comes to online shopping.
Good email marketing - like all good business - keeps the customer in focus. So, very few successful email marketing campaigns marketing strategiesthat sends out emails focused solely on the company and its products or services.
Most people working with email marketing today work with a combination of newsletters and marketing automationautomated email marketing. The latter is an effective and time-saving channel, and there are many different platforms available today that make it easy to get started with marketing automation, such as ActiveCampaign.
First and foremost, it is important to comply with the GDPR regulation. This means, among other things, not sending promotional emails to anyone other than those who have voluntarily signed up for your newsletter. It also means providing a clear and easy unsubscribe option in every single email. The opposite - signing up people who haven't opted in and trying to keep them against their will by hiding the unsubscribe button - will only lead to unhappy customers in the long run and will hurt your business.
What does the right email marketing strategy look like?
Of course, the exact type of emails you send out depends a bit on what kind of business you have. How big your business is. What product or service you offer. But there are some guidelines that are good to start from.
- Make sure you provide value to the customer with every email. It gets them used to the fact that opening emails from you is a good experience because they get something out of it. This not only benefits your open rates, but also prevents too many people from unsubscribing right away. Value can be anything from offers, discounts or just something interesting. Think creatively here.
- Make sure it's not just about you. Think like the customer here: Wouldn't it be nicer to receive an email that focuses on you and your needs? Instead of just getting emails bragging about how great products the company has to offer?
- Make sure to personalize your emails. Speak directly to the customer. Imagine you are writing an email to a good friend. Start with "Hello". Ask encouraging questions like "Did you have a good Christmas?" or "Are you ready for summer vacation?" Use emojis and colloquial language. This not only makes the email much more inclusive and interesting for the customer to read, it also takes the focus off the "hard sell". Writing a personalized email doesn't have to take a lot of time once you get used to it.
- When you need to sell something, make it "soft". Make sure the sales email is about more than just getting the sale. Maybe tell a funny anecdote about the product or something else that the customer will connect with. Then you can make your offer. This makes the sale soft rather than hard and increases the chance that the customer will actually choose to buy.
- Automation, automation, automation. Make sure you set up a welcome sequence. That is, one or more emails that your customers receive automatically after signup, welcoming them to your newsletter. One of the great strengths of email marketing is just how little time it takes. And with automation, it becomes even less so.
