With a seemingly endless list of social media platforms available today, many call into question the relevancy of email marketing. Can email really compete with the daily bombardment of digital noise? Well, the short answer is…Yes! Over 90% of adults in the U.S. use email today. Even 74% of teenagers, who are at the forefront of social media, continue to use email. This goes to show that email marketing is still by far, one of the most valuable and relevant ways to communicate with your audience. With that said, to market your product/service effectively, one needs a solid email marketing plan. One that will build a prospective customer into a true, die hard fan. To accomplish this, here are the top 8 email marketing campaigns that convert.
1. Welcome
The welcome email series is arguably one of the most important. It communicates a first impression of your brand and first impressions are key. By sending your subscriber an email series, you’re building brand awareness, familiarity, trust, and hopefully loyalty over time. Information you may want to share include the following.
- Expectations: As a new subscriber, what should they expect? This can include information such as how often they’ll be hearing from you, what kind of content they will receive, and anything else they can come to expect.
- Story: Take the opportunity to share your brand’s history. The who, what, when, where, and why of a brands story will set the stage for a loyal customer who aligns with your brands message. People identify with brands more than ever today, so take the opportunity to share your message.
- Value: Deliver value – Gaining an email address is a success in itself. Nothing comes off more repulsive then an immediate sales pitch. Give your subscribers immense value and they will become much more open to future purchases.
Ideally, it’s best to communicate more frequently at the beginning to build brand familiarity. Without this email series, subscribers won’t build a connection to your brand. This is a problem because when you eventually send an email about your new awesome product, no one will care to buy it. Welcome and engage with your guests and they will welcome your products/services.
2. Engagement
It’s important to keep your audience regularly engaged. This is accomplished through a number of regular emails that coincide with your brand strategy. This can be daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly email that your subscribers come to expect. For example, if your website has to do with daily flash sales, maybe a daily email would be acceptable. A blogging website may find a monthly round-up of articles more to their liking. It all comes down to what works best for your audience.
When sending your subscribers regular engaging material, it’s important to consider the content. Here are a few ways to succeed at engaging your subscribers.
- What will your audience enjoy?: Simply ask yourself, what’s something your audience wants to know more about? Write articles, create videos, podcasts, etc, anything your audience might find useful/enjoy.
- Lay off the sales pressure: Provide your customers massive value with the occasional product/service. If your email campaigns come across as sales-y and pushy, your likely to turn them away. It’s fine to promote your business, just don’t over do it.
- Give free stuff: ebooks, checklists, guides, templates, how-to’s, and more. Give your audience free products of high value and they will be more willing to purchase your products/services.
- Share relevant content: Did something exciting happen in your particular industry? Become helpful to your audience by providing interviews, updates, relevant articles. videos, anything that your audience may find valuable.
3. Conversion
The conversion email series is your typical email advertisement. It’s your chance to go into detail about a new product or service you may be offering. The key here, is to follow a progressive email strategy. Receiving a similar email over and over again may eventually lose effectiveness. Instead, build a campaign that continues to build off the previous email, which leads your audience in the direction of your great product/service. With that said, here are a few tips to a successful email campaign.
- Keep it targeted: Have one goal in mind and keep your email targeted. For instance, if you’re trying to sell your subscription service, don’t offer 10 other products in the same email campaign. This waters down your campaigns effectiveness and will lower the success of your subscription service. Keep it simple and focused.
- Don’t over sell: Keep your emails to an effective minimum. Nothing is more annoying than being bombarded with multiple sales emails and is a sure-fire way to push unsubscribes. Use analytics and find what works best for your audience.
4. Loyalty
Once you’ve gained a new customer, it’s important to follow up with a loyalty email series. Converting a new customer is difficult enough, so by rewarding your new clients, you’ll be sure gain brand loyalty and subsequent sales. Loyalty offers may include free content, discounted pricing, free shipping, and many other incentives. With that said, do not discount your pricing too often. Otherwise, this may create a negative brand perception along with lower revenue. Here are a few things to keep in mind while building your loyalty campaigns.
- Keep it simple: Keep your loyalty emails simple and effective. Free shipping, 5% off, buy one get one 50% off, the list goes on. By keeping your messaging targeted and simple, it communicates a clear incentive to buy.
- Relevant: Keep your offers relevant to your customers history. For instance, if you were to buy a jacket online, you wouldn’t likely need discount offers on kid’s toys. Send your customers content and incentives that they can actually use.
- Offer frequency: Keep your loyalty offers to an effective minimum. As I said previously, continuously discounted products can lead to negative brand perception and revenue. Build customer loyalty, but not at the expense of brand perception.
5. Referral
Were you aware that 84% of people trust word of mouth recommendations from family or friends? Even 68% trust referrals from opinions posted online. As you can see, using a referral email campaign is a great way to grow your customer base. To get the most of your efforts, focus on the following key points.
- Research loyal customers: Find what information you can about your most loyal customers. By doing so, you can segment your users and create referral campaigns they are most likely to participate in.
- Create a compelling offer: With a highly targeted email, show your loyal customers a compelling offer that caters to their liking. Incentives for doing so may include a discount for social media sharing, discounts for writing a review, discounts for you and a friend, free shipping, and many more.
- Easily shareable: Don’t make your customers work any harder than they have to, make sharing as effortless as possible. Include social media links, pre-written posts, QR codes, whatever makes sharing as simple as possible.
6. Feedback
One of the most crucial aspects to marketing is market research. How can you sell a product without knowing your customers needs? The feedback email campaign is a great way to learn about your loyal customers. Through customer reviews, online surveys, or even a simple email, one can find a wealth of knowledge to improve their products or services. The following provides a solid set of guidelines you can stick to.
- 3 week review: 3 weeks after purchase, reach out to your customer and ask for a product/service review. Be sure to show your gratitude for their business and hope they are happy with their purchase/experience.
- 3-6 month improvement: Within 3-6 months, reach out to your customers and ask how your business could improve. This gives great insight into where you could improve your products, services, and/or purchase experience.
- Follow up: When receiving any feedback from customers, be sure to follow up! Nothing builds brand loyalty more than being heard and taken care of in any instances of dissatisfaction.
- Incentives: Take the opportunity to offer an incentive for providing feedback. Discounts, gift cards, free shipping, etc. The customer insight you gain will be well worth it.
7. Retargeting
Retargeting email focuses on reminding visitors to visit your website. Maybe the visitor looked at a few products, added a few things to their cart, and left the site. This is the perfect opportunity to reach out and give a little reminder. The most effective retargeting campaigns will focus on the following.
- Personalized products: If the customer added a snow jacket to their cart and left the site, send them an email with that jacket and maybe a few similar options. This will not only remind them to purchase, but make the purchasing process that much easier.
- Recommended products: If the customer was interested in snow jackets, take the opportunity to recommend similar and/or related products. This could be other jackets, snow gloves, beanies, anything relevant and useful to the customer.
- Offer an incentive: Sometimes, all the visitor needs is a small incentive to follow through on the purchase. Try offering a small discount, free shipping, or anything that may help turn the visitor into a customer.
- Offer help: Lastly, reach out to your visitor and ask if they need any help. The personal touch and care could go a long way in increasing conversions.
8. Transactional
Transactional emails are those that include, confirmations, receipts, shipping notifications, and more. Take this opportunity to present an outstanding brand experience. Remember, there are many competing products and services in the market. Offer an exceptional experience and you will edge out the competition. Within your transactional email, it’s best to include the following.
- Branded content: Be sure all email campaigns are consistently branded. This includes fonts, colors, layout, imagery, etc.
- Customer Service: It’s important to provide customer service details such as email, phone number, hours, etc. You want your customers to know they can count on your company in the event of any issue.
- Social Media: Transactional emails are an excellent time to provide social media links. Customers can connect, comment, write reviews, and join other customers in the community.
Take Aways
There you have it, 8 different email marketing campaigns you can use to increase awareness, familiarity, engagement, and eventual loyalty out of your visitors. If you’d like to learn more about email marketing, my friends over at ConvertKit are offering a free ebook titled, The Complete Guide to Email Marketing. I downloaded it myself and it’s packed full of information about why email matters, building your email list, selling more with email, and much more. I highly recommend reading through that, using an email service provider like ConvertKit, working on creating a number of email marketing campaigns, and growing your brand/business into something great!
Have you started working on an email marketing campaign? Let’s hear about it and let me know if you have any questions!
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