Consumers, nowadays, use social media to not only interact with each other, but to also shop for things. From Facebook to Instagram, consumers and businesses alike are using social media to post and or spread a message, and now, buy things. Imagine seeing something nice, like a purse or a watch, in your social media feed, and you decide to click on it to buy it. (It’s that easy!)
But what about email? Is email still being used to communicate with others online? Do businesses still take advantage of Email Campaigns for their marketing? Can email marketing strategies be just as effective and interactive as social media postings? The answer might surprise you!
As of March 2021, the total number of email users worldwide is 4 billion. This number, according to Statista, is expected to rise to 4.6 billion by the year 2025. The current number of email users does not exclude businesses. In fact, 64% of small businesses run email marketing campaigns for their consumers on a regular basis.
Now, while some people will say that email campaigns for marketing aren’t the newest and most exciting way of reaching your customers, they’re still incredibly powerful. While social media might be more effective than email in certain ways, emailing still has some tricks up its sleeve. It’s a very effective way of getting your customers’ attention and showing them that you are just the company for them.
To truly harness the power of email though, you need to be able to use it effectively. Here are some examples of truly effective email campaigns, so you can get an idea of how you should implement a campaign for your business.
Have Email Campaigns Objectives
First and foremost, your marketing team needs to have a plan for the email marketing campaign. To have a decent plan for your campaign, you and the team will need to establish some goals.
First, think about the following questions:
- What do you want to achieve from an email marketing campaign?
- What type(s) of products or services do you want to market?
- Is your email going to be promotional, personalized, etc.?
- Is the purpose of the campaign to boost sales?
- Is the purpose to keep in touch with consumers?
When you have solid answers to these types of questions, you and the marketing team will be able to set the right goals for the email marketing campaign.
Keep in mind that your goals are to help your company counter the marketing efforts of your competitors. It’s likely that your competitors might be ahead of the game with their own email marketing goals. So, why not take things a step further by looking into what competitors are doing right, and what they have yet to improve on. This allows you to craft your email marketing goals in a way that can help your company perform better than the competition.
Create A Loyalty Email Marketing Campaign
Consumers love to receive rewards from their subscriptions. From monthly perks to freebies, consumers definitely want to get their money’s worth – or something free – just by subscribing to an emailing list. This is a great idea to reward them for their loyalty. That’s where email loyalty campaigns come in!
When it comes to inspiring loyalty, there’s nothing like a loyalty campaign. These emails are designed to keep customers coming back for more, as every time they buy from you, they’ll get something in return.
The good news is, there’s no one way to set up a loyalty program. In fact, setting it up is up to you and your business. If you’re not comfortable following a formula that you see often (especially from your competitors), then make up your own! For example, you can create a points system, where every time the customer buys from you, they earn points. When they have enough points, they can get a free item, or money off your products.
Once you set up the program, let your followers know. An email campaign is one of the best ways of doing that. You can let all your customers know what’s available, and send follow up emails to keep them in the loop.
Related: How To Create Email Newsletters That People Love To Read?
Send Automated Welcome Messages
One way to make subscribers feel welcome is to send them a welcome message. This message should thank them for joining your company’s circle (whether it’s a newsletter, a new account with your brand, etc.), and outline some of the benefits they’ll have of being on the list.
There are lots of ways you can automate welcome emails, so they’re sent out as soon as someone signs up. Automation not only saves time, but also gives the customer instant feedback. Customer acknowledgment can give a great first impression of your business.
Writing a good welcome email is key, too. Depending on your industry, you’ll need to write the welcome email in a way that’s both easy-to-understand and impactful for subscribers. Here’s where you can provide more details about the services your company offers. And, remember to be creative when writing these emails, so that they have personality and professionalism in the mix.
Choosing Communication Preferences
Keep in mind: This isn’t an email campaign as such, but it’s something that you should be offering your customers. You could be doing everything else right, but if customers aren’t in control of what they receive from you, they could still be put off.
To avoid this from happening, you’ll want to give the customer control over the emails they get from you. You can have an email preference center in the email, which allows subscribers to customize their experience however they want.
Suppose that a customer can’t look at their emails every day, unless said emails are important. In that case, you can allow that customer to customize their email intake by choosing which emails they prefer the most.
As you can see, you’ll want to give them the option to choose how often they get emails, select the categories that they want to hear about, and change the email address you send emails to. That way, they’re not getting email fatigue, as they’re not getting emails about things that they aren’t interested in.
Send Personalized Offers
One of the ways that businesses have seen success with email campaigns is with personalized offers. You can find customer data to help you customize offers by looking into your customer base (or analytics). Again, it can be done with automation software, so the whole thing can be set up in minutes.
For example, say you have a sale happening on your site for women’s shoes. Since you’re only sending the email to the people who would be interested, then you’ll see much more success with the campaign.
In that case, good customer base segmentation can help you create personalized offers. Just set up your email base into different segments (e.g., age, location, gender, etc.). This enables you you to send emails to the right people.
Send Trigger Emails
A trigger email is one that is sent after a customer completes a certain activity on your website. There are a lots of email marketing campaign types like:
- The welcome email (as mentioned earlier)
- Cart abandonment
- Purchase confirmation
- Order status (i.e. on its way, delivered, etc.)
- Any other changes in the email recipient’s account, etc.
One example is the abandoned cart email. If someone adds something to their cart, but then leaves the site without buying it, you can notify them via email. Now, this is not to pester customers about abandoning their carts; this email is just a courtesy one that lets them know about it in case they’ve forgotten about it. In this case, you can use this email to offer discounts, in order to tempt them to go back and complete the purchase.
You can also automate emails to be sent to customers if they haven’t visited the site in a while. Having trigger emails set up can help you retain business. A good email will show the customer what they’re missing, and convince them that they need to come back and buy from you again.
Send Discounts And Offers
The truth is, it’s not enough to simply tell email subscribers that you have something great to offer them. In other words, how can you tell them that they need to look at something important?
How about using discounts and offers to your advantage?
This is another very popular way of using email campaigns. Engage your customer base by sending out discounts for certain products every so often. Or, announcement special offers on the whole store.
That’s why it’s important to give your emails value – real value. Allow your subscribers to feel that whatever they’re getting is exclusive to them. Exclusive things can be discounts and special offers. This works well because many companies make it exclusive to those on the mailing list. For example, you can send out a discount code just to the people on the mailing list, so they can get offers that those regular customers can’t. It makes it much more tempting to sign up to the list, so they can get the very best deals.
Keep Customers Up To Date On Content
Site freshness is one of the key email campaign strategies your SEO, so that users can find you on search engines. It’s also a great way to keep customers engaged, as they’ll keep coming back for more.
So, make it your job to put out new and exciting content with an adequate posting schedule. A blog is a great way to keep things fresh, tell customers about everything new that you’re doing, and of course improve that SEO.
Updates are also great emails to send out, which you can call a weekly or monthly “roundup.” A “roundup” usually shows subscribers content that they may have missed, along with additional info about your business. This is especially ideal for when you’re needing to advertise a new line of products.
Ask For Feedback
Usually, sending emails is a one-way communication. You send the email out, and the customer decides whether they want to read it or not. Let’s fix that!
You may ask your customers to review your products. They’ll let you know what they think, and you can put that info to good use. Being able to collect this data is incredibly useful for you, as you can get an idea of what your customers like and don’t like about your service. That data will then shape any future improvements you make.
Another approach comes after a customer buys something from you. Here, you can send a follow-up email about leaving a product review. This will push a lot of customers into actually coming back and leaving that review, so you’ll have more social proof on your site.
Try Using Click-To-Call CTAs
Finally, your emails will need effective calls-to-action (CTAs).
In some businesses, your customers are going to need more information before they buy from you; they can’t buy something just at face value. So, why not make things sweeter with a call-to-action? In other words, entice them to take action by making that known inside your email.
If you sell insurance for example, they can’t usually just get everything they want from the website. That’s why you would want the customers to call you. In that case, you can set up click-to-call CTAs in your emails. These offer a button that mobile users can tap, and it lets them call you right away. It stops them from going on the web and getting discouraged, or going to a competitor to buy their product instead.
Conclusion
So, there you have it!
These are a few different email campaigns that you can use to really put your mailing list to good use. As you can tell, emailing is not obsolete just yet, especially when running your business. By keeping these tips in mind, your email marketing campaign will be tried and true, and your company will soon see successful sales and an expanding customer base.
We wish your marketing team luck on creating successful email marketing campaigns!
