Effective communication is vital to growing a successful florist business. Email marketing gives you the opportunity to get information out to your customers in a convenient and cost-effective way, whether you want to send out details of new opening hours, product offers or special holiday promotions. Getting started with email marketing is easy, but we’ve put together these top tips to help you put together an email marketing plan that works from the off.
1. Get your timing right
Even though customers sign up to receive emails, they do not want bombarding with them every day. You can overcome ‘email irritation’ by developing an email marketing plan that sends information to customers only when they need it. If you want to keep regular contact with your customers through email then consider sending out a weekly or monthly email. Unless you have a regular customer base and lots of information to share, start with a monthly email to test the waters and see how your customers respond.
2. Be selective in the information you share
You only need to share important information with your customers. Think about what you would want to know if you were receiving the email. Information about new products or offers is fine, but sending details of everything you sell might get tedious. If customers want to know your stock, they will come into the store to view it. Giving out too much information makes the marketing less effective and risks those dreaded ‘Unsubscribe me!’ requests.
3. Spend time on presentation
There are a number of different formats for emails nowadays and your email marketing plan needs to give due consideration to the type you are planning to send. Think about your customers. Would most of them read their emails on a smartphone (more than 50% of people do!)? If so, you might want to consider simple formats without heavy image backgrounds so that the emails load faster. If you know that most of your customers would read their emails on a laptop screen, you can afford to spend more time on fancy formatting.
Thinking carefully about these three things will help you get off to a great start with email marketing!