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E-Mail Marketing
Before you begin looking for ways to promote your business that will cause you to spend money, consider the methods that you can employ to market to customers that you are ready have. Of course, there is nothing wrong with going after new customers, but you want to make sure you have a system in place to market to them a second, third and even an infinite number of times.
One of the best ways to market to customers that you already have is to collect their contact information and use it to establish a buying relationship with them. In the context of this relationship, you will get a multitude of opportunities to sell your product or service over time.
If you establish and contact them with regularity, then e-mail marketing will work well for you.
Factors to Consider in E-Mail Marketing
It's likely that you have been approached by companies like Constant Contact and IContact to commit to their e-mail marketing service. You may have heard that email is a necessary tool to keep your customers aware of what you're doing. The suggestion is to use the electronic equivalent of a paper newsletter.
The email newsletter routinely resembles a 'magazine' format of links from the company site, related articles of interest and special product offers. Customers receiving these e-newsletters typically expect discount pricing and loyalty based offers. The benefit in having this expectation established in the mind of your customers, is that they are likely to be watching for your e-mail...
The Effectiveness of Email
Now that people are using various modes of communication on the Internet, it would be easy to believe that some of the older technology may be going by the wayside. For example, internet users increasingly communicate with each other now using social networks like Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis. They're using the instant messaging feature on these social media sites to hold conversations, share documents and pass links between each other.
Mobile technology has heightened the use of these forms of communication. Now that one can use instant messaging and social media so easily on a mobile device, people are using them to connect at a more so than they are using traditional landline telephones.
How Do You Write a Customer Centric E-Mail?
Your e-mails should carry with them the knowledge of your customer profile. If you are sending out generic e-mails, that could make sense to anyone reading them, you may be focusing your attention a little too broadly. Your e-mails should speak directly to your customers in vernacular that they understand.
Of course, this will mean that some of the customers that have signed up for your e-mails will choose no longer to read them. As you become more focused in your language and subject matter, some will unsubscribe and some will tune your company's emails out altogether.
All of this should be expected and is part of a longer term, effective e-mail marketing strategy. Understanding the profile of your customer base also means that you'll know what their most frequently asked questions are.
The Sales E-Mail
Your sales e-mail should have all of the elements of good copywriting. However, unless you've established the kind of relationship with your database where they'll read long e-mails, it should not be written as a sales page. The objective of a sales page, is to spell out everything that it takes to uncover the value of your product and service to a site visitor so that they will buy. An e-mail on the other hand, is designed to get your customer or prospect excited enough with the prospect of solving their problem, to click your direct link to the sales page.
Your sales email headline should be directly relevant to subjects that you have already discussed in your prior e-mails. However, remember that the objective is to get them first to open your e-mail.
The Structure of an Informational E-mail
Even though your informational e-mail will not have a direct selling message in it, it should have subtle and convincing arguments that the reader should buy your product or service as their chief solution. Your e-mail should start out describing the problem in as much detail as possible. This is where having an understanding of a customers' words in describing their problem truly matter. You want to use their language, so that they understand that you "get" them.
Your words should paint a visual picture of your customer's problem. While it is true that they already know what their problem looks and feels like, your words help them to visualize the nature of their problem as well as to be certain that you can relate to them.
