The strongest use of email as a marketing tool comes in the form of campaigns: organized, targeted releases that follow a specific strategy. As you think about developing strategies for your email campaigns, keep these tricks in mind.
Create multiple opportunities to gather email addresses
An anemic email list is not worth the effort of your best email campaigns. Always look for more ways to grow your list. Fortunately, there are multiple ways to persuade current customers and prospects to turn over their email addresses:
- Encourage (and sometimes require) visitors to the company website or store to register for every action, whether it’s saving a shopping cart, buying a purchase, just establish an account
- Create contests and giveaways for which visitors must fill out a short form
- Post free downloads on the site
- Offer free seminars
- Offer enrollment in reward clubs or coupon clubs
- Have a forum
- Allow comments on the blog section of your website and require an email confirmation before the comment is posted
- Encourage people to email reviews, questions, or suggestions
- Have a Newsletter sign-up box
When sending emails like welcome notices, account approvals, and shipping confirmations, small businesses should recognize that these are opportunities to make personalized recommendations of related goods and services or to encourage participation in polls or social media. Infusionsoft, which combines sales and marketing automation with customer relationship management (CRM) into one software system, lets you manage these details automatically, which saves you time while also personalizing your emails. That translates as a big win for your business
Educate the recipients
List subscribers often get ad fatigue. They can become so accustomed to being sold something that they ignore emails. To avoid this, rather than always promoting the company’s offerings, mix it up: You can provide advice and link to a related company blog, or you can share details about community partnerships or the company’s social responsibility. Suddenly, your business is humanized, which helps the company build deeper relationships.
Send out your Email Campaigns at the most opportune time
Experian Marketing Services, a leading provider of consumer measurement and analytical services, found that some times of day are better than others to send an email blast. Open rates vary by industry, but in general the highest opening rate for bulk mail—22 percent—occurs in the evening after people have left work and had dinner, such as between 8 p.m. and midnight. Not surprisingly, these times also had better conversion rates.
On the other hand, transactional emails are nearly always opened at any time of day.
Fresh email received at the right time of day has the best shot at engagement. Armed with this data, you can send your emails at the optimum time for your recipients to read them.