Are you currently not doing email marketing for your business? You’re leaving great marketing strategy—reputation management, sales leads, and customer retention—on the table. But it isn’t hard to start email marketing if you have a plan. Don’t know where to start? We’re going to go over the basics of email marketing for businesses: collecting the emails you need and putting them to work in your marketing.
First, What’s Your Source for Emails?
Of course, you can’t start email marketing without emails. There are three major sources of legitimate emails you can use (sending out unsolicited emails often will lead to restrictions on most email sending platforms):
- Getting Emails from Your Customers: Your customers often provide their email addresses as part of the sales process, either during initial contact, extended communication, or when filling out a form. Make sure someone is collecting these emails and entering them properly.
- Incentivizing Emails Through Promos: Providing an email as the cost for something, such as a downloadable product, a promo code, or other gated, desirable content. It’s important to market this content as part of this process.
- Passive Signups on Websites: You can include sign-up options on your website and other platforms for people to sign up for updates, newsletters, promotions, and deals. Always worth having, but not a major generator.
The collection of emails can be partially or fully automated, but it requires integrating systems, including whatever CRMs, website forms, and email platforms you use. For more tips, see our blog, How to Build Up Your Email Subscriber List.
Second, What’s Your Goal with Email Marketing?
Now that you have the emails… what is your goal in using them? Sometimes, the best use will depend on the source of your emails, and other times, where your business is most suffering (from lack of sales to lack of reviews), you will dedicate the best time.
Newsletters: Customer Retention and Community
Newsletters remind your current customers that you’re thinking about them, build community, and incentivize them to come back for your products and services. This can also be a platform for announcements and news you want to share with customers who aren’t as active on social media. Learn how to write them.
Drip Campaigns: Sales Through Email Marketing
If you collect emails from interested people who are not yet in the sales pipeline, you can make emails part of that process with drip campaigns, sending automated emails in series with marketing focused on making a sale. This can be combined with an incentivization that comes in the first email of the sequence.
Nurture Emails: Post-Sales Reputation Management
Instead of just focusing on retention, you can also reach out to customers after they use your product or service to build your reputation. Reviews are a critical part of business, so sending an email to a satisfied customer requesting a review is a great way to get them. Make sure to include these types of emails as part of the offboarding process.
Email marketing is just one aspect of a comprehensive marketing strategy, and it can still be a lot of work. But you don’t have to go it alone. Vision is here to build out the marketing plan that meets your needs and budget and then execute it, from email marketing and social media to website design. Contact us today to learn more. Also check out the rest of our Vision blogs, our enVisioning Success podcast, and our downloadable Marketing Strategies Playbook.
