Email marketing and its role in growing your business.
Email is a cost efficient, simple and effective way to keep in touch with your customers and mailing list subscribers. Unlike social media, where your ability to get in front of customers is at the mercy of an algorithm which you can’t control, your emails are pretty much guaranteed to reach those on your mailing list. What’s more, you can also see which of your subscribers has opened your emails, as well as measuring click through rates and other types of engagement.
Email can be really well targeted to a specific audience within your subscriber list by using segmentation. It can also be scheduled to send automatically based on subscriber behaviour, purchasing history or triggered based on timed events.
Types of email marketing
There are a number of different types of email you can send when you are trying to grow your business.
Welcome emails
Welcome emails are one of the most widely opened types of email and they are a great way to make new subscribers feel valued and appreciated. Taking the opportunity to connect with your new subscribers when they are receptive to your messages and engaged is an opportunity not to be missed. They can be set up to send automatically and even tailored to suit different types of customers. You can use the high open rate for welcome emails to your advantage by including an exclusive special offer or discount code.
Special offer emails
Sending out special offer emails can be a great way to generate targeted sales. Offer emails tend to have a high open rate and are usually welcomed by your subscribers. Making use of time-limited offers or other devices like flash sales or limited numbers to try to create a sense of urgency can help to maximise the effectiveness of your email and generate sales. Special offer emails can be very effectively used to highlight and promote specific products and increase sales.
Newsletters
Depending on your business model, newsletters can be a great engagement tool for your email audience. Focussing on the quality of the information you are providing is very much the name of the game here though. Try using an email newsletter to showcase new products or services, provide information and product guides, point customers to relevant, useful blog content on your website, send event invitations or provide industry news or other information which your audience will find helpful. Provided you are sending information which is useful and interesting to your audience your newsletters will generally be welcomed. You can also use a newsletter format to generate sales opportunities through product focussed sections linking directly to your website.
Product suggestions and repeat purchases
Some of the most successful online retailers over the past few years have built their success by understanding the buying behaviour of their customers and using that understanding to make personalised suggestions of other products which may be of interest to them or to remind them to repeat their purchase. Many of the most widely used email platforms offer the opportunity to filter and segment your list by a variety of different measures and it is this which allows you to send more personalised emails to your customers. This could be based on their previous buying behaviour, by looking at how they have interacted with your previous email and even, with the right integration, what pages and products they have visited on your website.
Abandoned shopping cart reminders
Some studies have estimated that as many as 80% of shopping carts are abandoned before a purchase is completed with other studies showing the rates at nearer to 50% with an average across 44 separate studies showing an abandonment rate of 69.8%. It stands to reason that any strategy which can win back some of these potential purchases can only have a positive impact on your bottom line. When sending an abandoned cart email, using product ratings, customer reviews and social proof, focussing on the specific product, can help to push hesitant shoppers to completing their purchase.
Surveys
Your email subscriber list can be a great resource for providing you with market research. Using email to send out short surveys is a great way to stay in touch with your subscribers and can give you a valuable insight into how they view your business and your products. As well as helping you to better understand your customers, their buying behaviour and how they view your business, asking for feedback from your customers helps them to feel that they are valued and important, making them more likely to buy from you again in the future.
These are just some of the ways you can use email marketing to grow sales for your business. Email marketing is a hugely flexible and effective way to communicate with your customers and potential customers. It is also incredibly cost effective, simple to set up, can be precisely targeted and personalised. Although there is an element of work required in initially setting up features like email automation, once they are in place they tend to look after themselves with minimal further input required from you. Automated emails which have been in place for a period of time also help you to build up a picture of what your customers find engaging and can be easily updated and tweaked where necessary.
Further reading
For more information on the benefits of email, and to download our free, comprehensive guide to effective email marketing, containing practical advice and actional tips to help you get started.
If you think your business could benefit from help with email marketing or your current approach is not providing the results you are looking for, get in touch with us to find out more about our services. Whether you are looking for help with integration of email providers, sending a regular newsletter, setting up email automations, or ongoing management of your email mailing list and analytics, we can a flexible and cost-effective solution.