In business it is essential to have a good mix of tools in your marketing toolbox, and email marketing is definitely a useful tool to have. A good email marketing campaign gives you the ability to reach new customers as well as enhancing relationships with your current customers. It can even help you win back old customers and encourage current customers to remain loyal to you and keep buying!
So where do you start? Let’s say you run an online ecommerce website selling luxury goods. You already have a vetted customer database full of clients who you’ve already asked whether or not they are willing to receive promotional information. The first thing to do is look after the customers you already have before you start looking elsewhere. You can do this in a variety of ways; offer them some special deals that are only available to them as they’ve already bought from you, or let them into your online sale a day early. By doing this you are helping your customers see how great you are, and if you’re lucky, they’ll be telling their friends all about you!
Next you should target new clients with different promotions, and keep in touch with all new and prospective clients by producing a newsletter to let them know about some upcoming product releases or news. This keeps your name in their minds so that when they are ready to buy what you are selling, it is your company name they think of first, not your competitors’. Finally it is important that you have a method of measuring the effectiveness of each email marketing campaign so that you can see which promotions are working best.
I also find that that frequency of emails is important. If you overdo it you’ll get more unsubscribes or a decreased open rate. B2B 1-2 a month is enough, B2C – go for once a week.