Email marketing isn’t just blasting your offers to your list. An email list can be used to take care of customer service and retention, brand building, and generating useful data about your client/prospect base. All of this, either directly or indirectly, can lead to more sales.
If every email you send to a customer or prospect is an obvious sales offer, your list will tune you out, and they’ll eventually unsubscribe.
That’s why it’s important to have balance with your email campaign. Too much of any one thing will block the results you want. True, you need to sell offers to your email list, but you don’t need to bombard them. When someone gives you their email address, they are investing a little bit of trust into you and your company. Constantly emailing offers to the point of spamming is a direct violation of that trust.
To get even more out of your email list, you need to build upon that trust, not destroy it. And there are a few types of emails that you can send to your list that can accomplish this.
Newsletters
A weekly, biweekly, or monthly newsletter can be very effective at building both rapport and your own brand. If you’re a florist, you can talk about the types of flowers and floral arrangements you sell, and how your customers can use them in fresh and exciting ways. You can talk about different tips and tricks that are relevant to your client base. You can talk about your company—about what it has done in the past and what it will do in the future. You can even feature some of your customers, and talk about how they successfully used your products and services. The amount of things that you can discuss is near-limitless, and if you are providing value in the content, your subscribers will appreciate and may even thank you for it.
Writing a newsletter is similar to blogging, in that you need to write about things that your audience will want to read. If you’re unsure of what to put in your newsletter, look to other blogs in the florist industry and even subscribe to companies that have their own newsletters. This can supply inspiration for your own newsletter content, and will help you to be even more creative with your own ideas.
If done right, not only will your newsletter content make you seem authoritative, it will give you even more opportunities to sell your product. Giving value builds trust, and that gives you more leeway to sell your various offers. In your value-packed newsletters, weave in some of your products that are relevant to what you are writing about. Example: If you are writing about the beautiful floral arrangements for Mother’s Day, include a deal on those types of flowers.
Surveys and customer feedback
A problem that many businesses have is that they don’t take the time to listen to their customers. The good thing is that getting feedback from your customers is extremely easy. Using services like SurveyMonkey can give detailed insight into what your customers think about your company.
You need to ask your list questions that are relevant to making your product, service, and company better.
This builds the perception of caring for your client base. Not every business takes the time to email them to specifically what they want. And beyond that, if their feedback is sound, you should implement some of their suggestions, because it actually proves that you listened to them. This helps you create products, packages and promotions that are optimized for your client base. It also enables you to employ more personalized and effective customer retention tactics.
This creates a connection with you and your customers, and will make them more loyal to your business. This, in turn, will lead to more sales in the future.
The Testimonial Email
You need to be actively collecting testimonials from your customers. The best way to acquire testimonials is to encourage them. In your surveys, have a section where they talk about how your company or product helped them. After they purchase something from your website, send an email to encourage a testimonial. If they purchase from you in-store, tell them that you are looking for honest testimonials of your company. Be persistent.
Once you have collected enough testimonials, compile a few of them into one email. Make that email attractive with bright and powerful images and easy-to-read formatting. If you can, include the name and picture of the person giving the testimonial.
The purpose of the testimonial email is to show how others have used and found success with your products. A testimonial is a powerful influencer in securing a new customer or sale. At the end of each testimonial email, briefly explain how they can achieve the same results and include a direct call-to-action.
The Wrap-Up
The point of this email series was to give guidelines and ideas on sending promotional emails. Well-rounded marketing has to include a solid email campaign. Hitting “send” on an intentionally well-written email is an easy way to get new customers and sales.
The best thing that you can do is start implementing some of the suggestions in this blog series and see for yourself whether they work for you business.