Email marketing is an effective way of promotion and you simply can’t argue with that. Every company puts a lot of effort into maintaining a good relationship with their existing clients, but what’s more important, they want to attract new customers. Building an image of a brand is the key to success, so we can’t imagine running a business without staying in touch with your clients. If you run an e-store, one of the best forms of contact with the clients is email marketing. It is a direct marketing form, where your main communication tool is email. In this article you will find out what are the forms of email marketing and how it looks in practice.
Email marketing – what are the advantages?
First of all, using this method of communication you build consumer loyalty and relationship with your audience. We live in a time, when everybody has at least one email account which they check almost daily. Using email became an inherent part of our lives. If you send a message directly to the client, it is more likely that they are going to read it. If you publish the message on social media, you can’t be sure that the message reaches them.
Second of all, you don’t need to invest a large amount of money, if you approach this thoroughly. Another reason, why you should apply email marketing is that you can send a lot of emails at the same time and reach an unlimited number of people.
It’s worth to mention that you have the option to customize your emails, where you can address the recipient by their name. The client would feel special, and there is a chance that they notice it. Of course, social media are also a vital part of communication with your audience. The article about how to create a perfect combination of social media and email marketing will appear on the blog shortly.
Now let’s focus on the examples so we can show you how it looks in practice.
We have two basic forms in email marketing: newsletter and mailing.
Newsletter
In simple words: it’s just regular communication with your clients. This way you can inform them about your offer, or products. But most importantly, you can inform your viewers about the news and changes. The subscriber gave you their email address, so now it’s your turn to give them something in return. If you focus exclusively on sending ads and sales offers, you can lose your subscribers. Create value that will convince your subscribers to stay on your list. You build a bond between your brand and a client, and work on consumer loyalty.
Remember that this kind of marketing requires consistency. Don’t let your clients forget about your brand and send Newsletters relatively often. Inform them about promotions and discounts!
-
Use one email template, so the subscribers get used to the structure
-
Newsletter helps building and maintaining a relationship with the subscriber
-
Send emails regularly, for example twice a week – on Mondays and Thursdays, or two times a month
-
Your content should provide value which is not available elsewhere. It has to be a value they signed up for.
Commercial email
In commercial mailing, you have more creative possibilities. It is a one time offer and it doesn’t function as a mean of building a relationship with the client. You just want to inform the client about the product and make them do a certain thing. When you create mailing, you have to focus on a form of presentation. It has to be clear and concise. The email should contain a big high quality image with minimal text on it. You should put a button at the end of the email, that contains a call to action. For example: buying a product, attending an event, or signing up to a newsletter.
-
One time offer, for example discount on a product.
-
It has one purpose: you want your customer to make a certain action. For example: taking part in a competition, buying a guide, or use a discount.
-
Less content, more attention grabbing images.
Autoresponder
The potential of email marketing is huge. I didn’t discover anything new, it’s just a fact. However, you need to know how to use this potential in order to benefit from it. You need tools that automate your business. Can you imagine the system that works automatically? The system that could work for you 24/7? We’re talking about autoresponder and if you start using it, you can fully enjoy the benefits of email marketing. But what exactly is autoresponder? It’s a tool, which can automate your business and your sales. All your emails are under your control and you can plan them in advance. Additionally, you have all the statistics in front of you, so you can check, how many people got your message.
-
You can have an infinite number of mailing lists. Yes, exactly. There are no limits. Those can be dozens of potential clients or people interested in promotion.
-
You can handle hundreds of dozens of email addresses
-
You can send messages to a number of address lists at the same time. No message get to be sent twice to the same address.
-
You can set messages to be sent to the readers with a delay, for example one day from signing up, 3 days from signing up, etc.
See? There are many possibilities
But let’s not complicate things and start from the basics. I want to introduce you to this topic as best as I can, as it is very important and you need to know how to use it. You can create a queue of emails using autoresponder, which you can plan the way they are sent to the customer in the right time after making a certain action.
Imagine that someone has just signed up to your newsletter email list. Thanks to autoresponder you can generate the message which will be send automatically. In the content of the email, you can thank the subscriber for signing up and also offer value: a guide written by you, an e-book, or an article on your blog. The person would be added to your email list and you can start sending them emails systematically, informing them about news, promotions, new products, interesting articles, and other things you produce. You save time, as you setup the system once, and you save money, as you send particular content to the particular mailing list and not the whole email database.
Email and relationship with your clients
Sending emails systematically can really help you with that. You can also teach them new things, show how to solve problems in multiple ways, within the same topic. Next, you can introduce and offer them products or tools that could help them to accomplish their goal. This way you can increase your sales and let them meet you.
Now imagine you have over 1000 people on your list. You have to send an email with information to every person. How much time would it take you?
A moment, when you use autoresponder. All it takes is to prepare one message and the system will replace words in the right places. How to do it? You will find out in the upcoming materials we are preparing for you.
To sum up
What is also worth mentioning is the sales. Well, this is what is the most important thing in the whole process. By gradually introducing marketing emails, your brand will become more and more popular and will generate higher income. Content you post on your website or social media are not enough. No matter how much content you put out there, you will eventually have to use email marketing. There is no better way to reach the client. I hope we convinced you that it’s worth to start using email marketing in building relationship with the clients of your brand. Moreover, it’s worth to mention that the companies which use the solutions we mentioned about, reached a higher level of sales, and built a sustainable and stable brand image for themselves.
Wanna know more?
Go to the entry to find out more: How to start email marketing >>
