Often businesses are reluctant to run email marketing campaigns due to fear of being seen as spammers however it is one of the easiest, cheapest and most effective forms of marketing providing timely results…if done correctly. It is important to get the most out of your email marketing campaign as an email that isn’t well planned, interesting and relevant will have little effect.
Email marketing is especially important for eCommerce sites as a link to their site is available at the click of a button and particularly effective if your email marketing is permission based. This way, those receiving your emails are expecting them and most likely to hear your message; hence a higher conversion rate. Although emails seem impersonal they can often be the best method to gain customer loyalty with their less intrusive nature.
All emails have three important elements; the sender’s details, the subject line and the message body and getting the most out of these are key.
The Introduction…
The name or address of the sender more often than not determines whether a recipient will open the email and so the conversion rate can rely on this. The most important rule is to keep it simple in the least amount of characters. Many businesses have found a personal touch of a real person’s name rather than a company name can be effective. However, as spammers have also adopted this strategy, it can backfire unless the recipient recognises the sender’s name. Also, in terms of the email address, people are more likely to trust one ending in your company name rather than from a mail service.
The message subject, again, should be short and simple with the message you want to send out in as few words as possible. The most important information should be included in the first 20 characters, for example ‘Special offer’ and the whole subject should not exceed 50 characters. If there’s any ambiguity with your message it is less likely to be opened.
On opening…
Once the email has been opened, the message body needs to be concise and to the point encouraging people that they need what you’re offering. The opening body text should grab the reader’s attention as soon as possible. A personal touch with words such as ‘you’ and ‘your’ can be useful. The end body text should include a strong call to action with reminders of aspects such as money back guarantees to remove any worries the potential customer may have.
You are legally required to have an ‘unsubscribe’ option within the email that gives the recipient the opportunity to opt out of your newsletter.
Cowell’s Garden Centre have an effective email marketing campaign and this is due to the fact that their emails are short, simple and to the point.
In the ‘From’ field they have their company name ‘Cowell’s Garden Centre’ stated clearly and their email address ending in their company name. The Subject field simply states the purpose of the email in 28 characters; ‘Special Offers from Cowell’s’ leaving no room for ambiguity which is all that is needed at this point.
The message body contains very few words with the email predominantly made up of images. For a company such as a garden centre, images are key as the strength of the image will determine whether the product is purchased. The text they do have states exactly what the offer is without any unnecessary words. The email refers to the recipient as ‘valued customer’ and states ‘We thought you might like to know about the latest offers at Cowell’s’. This makes the customer feel special and that they are receiving special offers for being a subscriber. The ‘you’ also adds a personal touch. They have two links to online vouchers on their website and their company information; email address, telephone number and URL are displayed clearly at the bottom of the email hence plenty of opportunity to visit their website.
It is useful to run email campaigns directed to specific people, for example a certain gender or those situated in a particular geographical position. At Eliot Turner we are currently building an email database and plan to collect information about our customers enabling us to tailor an email towards a specific demographic if we wish.
You need to decide how often you will be sending out emails as running multi-email campaigns can double your conversion rate however sending too many can annoy customers and have an adverse effect. There are no particular rules about how many emails to send are appropriate and the amount will depend on the type of business you run. You will gain more of an idea through trial and error and the tendencies you discover about your customers.
It is useful to keep a record of the number of responses you receive and the type of customer they are from, essentially finding the customers which are most responsive to your email campaign. If your response rates are low, then it is a good idea to rethink your email marketing campaign.