What’s Your Email Marketing Strategy?

Congratulations! You’ve made the decision to run an email marketing strategy. Every customer you have will become part of your campaign (or at least those that opt in) so you can always keep in touch with them to maximise your sales opportunities.

Great—but have you worked out how your strategy is going to work, what you’ll offer them and how you’ll present your information?

If your strategy is to work you can’t just sent out emails willy nilly without any thought. Equally, sending one out initially and then nothing for months also won’t work.

The idea behind email marketing isn’t just to sell things, it’s also there to help you build and enhance your customer relationships.

Sending emails at regular intervals will certainly help keep your clients interested in your services. Great information interspersed with offers will give a bit of variety. If your emails are constantly trying to sell your customers are likely to get a bit fed up so make sure you alternate them.

But other than that there are a few other things you can do with your email strategy to help build your relationships. Below are five suggestions that will add value and boost the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

1. Welcome, welcome

When someone first signs up for your emails make sure you send out a welcome email. Thank them for subscribing and give them some free and valuable information. This email is also a good opportunity to give them an outline of what they can expect to receive from you—email frequency, offers, information, competitions etc.

It’s also a great opportunity to start selling—incorporate a promotional offer as a thank you for signing up.

2. High days and holidays

There are no end of holidays throughout the year—Christmas, Easter, Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day etc. All present an ideal sales opportunity so make sure you have your offers ready and email in plenty of time.

3. Customer birthdays

Assuming you have a note of each customer’s birthday, you have yet another opportunity to add value to your relationship by offering them a special offer on their special day. Use subject lines such as Happy Birthday from Briar Copywriting, Your special birthday bonus etc.

4. Is everything OK?

Every once in a while it’s a good idea to send out a ‘maintenance’ email. You can ask for feedback about your service, whether they still want your emails etc. This will help you weed out ‘dead’ emails to ensure you are mailing to an active database and therefore maximising your ROI.

5. Sorry

Although this is last on the list it is possibly one of the most important emails you can send. No matter how careful you are something at sometime is likely to go wrong. But if dealt with quickly and efficiently, you could turn a negative experience into a positive one.

Make sure you send out an apology email. Explain what went wrong, if you can (depending on its seriousness) make it a bit light hearted and give an offer to say sorry.

Handled well, your email marketing strategy will boost your sales. Whether you write them in-house or utilise the services of a professional copywriter, the words within those emails will cement and enhance relationships and encourage your customers to open their wallets.