Alla-Khazam! Welcome to Big Slate Media’s reasons to email market. Since the dawn of the internet age, emails have been part of humanities’ second nature. In fact, 91% of people check email daily. That’s outstanding. In today’s magic show, we will make all your email marketing fears vanish.
For starters, if you are reading this and haven’t ever dabbled in email marketing because you think it’s too hard, or it doesn’t work that well, or “I can’t afford it”, then I’m here to say – FAKE NEWS.
The Escape Artist
Escape the straightjacket of “I can’ts” and “should’ves”. It’s really more simple than you think. For starters, if you aren’t collecting emails, then you need to create an opt-in form for your website or a form in your store for new customers. The people that opt-in are the ones that will buy more from you. Imagine a dating world where every person that was interested in you could give you their number… It’s streamlined dating, and this is streamlined sales. If you don’t have a website or don’t have a way to receive form submissions (you should really fix that), guess what… you still have a list. All of your existing customers! Surely you have their emails and they are a great way to start building a list of people that are already familiar with your brand.
If you have an email submission form already running on your website, go use a free email service, like MailChimp to put that list to use. It is free for up to 2,000 subscribers, has great templates, and you can track all kinds of useful data. MailChimp also has very useful tools to create those opt-ins, as previously talked about, if you still need to do that.
Truth is, after that setup process, the only thing that takes time, is the email creation; and that can be done every week, every month, or even quarterly. Really, whatever you can commit too. So, don’t be afraid. It’s so easy, that there are companies that are entirely built on email lists, like Scott’s Cheap Flights! “Scott’s” uses this as their primary way of communicating about their product (super awesome deals on international flights) to their customers. This is the ONLY way they deliver their product to the customer. That’s how powerful it is. There are 3x more emails accounts in existence than Facebook and Twitter accounts combined, it has the highest ROI of any marketing channel, and it’s not too late or too hard for you to start now.
Email Marketing – Pulling the Rabbit Out of the Hat
Now, once your ready to write your first email blast, use these tools as a means to dazzling the customer.
1) You can offer customers something.
If you’ve signed up for an email list at a store somewhere and have received any kind of coupon or special event, then you have been offered something. Once you sign up and receive these offers, you are probably more likely to return to that store because they are offering YOU something unique. This generates quality customers that will come back, but it is also a tool to convince people to opt-in to a list in the first place. “Get a free consultation when you sign up for our newsletter.” “25% off your first online purchase when you subscribe to our email catalog.”
2) You can be highly relevant!
We tell clients this all the time. Relevancy is most important to reaching customers. Amazon is a perfect example of this. “Great Christmas gifts under $15”. We all know those categories because usually, they matter to us. When thinking about how to be relevant to your audience in email marketing, think when are we the busiest and why. How can we matter to our customers? Remind them that you have a service or product that they love.
3) It can be the Nucleus of your marketing efforts.
Email marketing can glue it all together. Your advertising goals can be email form submissions, or you can track click-through rates. You can even link the form submission page on your Facebook. It simply can be the heartbeat of your marketing efforts, where social media, Google ads, Youtube content, and everything else can come to one main stage. Manage smarter, not harder. If you are worried about people unsubscribing, just remember that you don’t want people in your funnel that don’t have the potential to buy. If they leave, then your list is purer.
The Bow
So, if you aren’t using email lists and marketing to your customers through it, there is no better time than now to add some magic to your marketing efforts. Feel free to call us if you ever need help, but we’ll leave you with some helpful resources that we keep bookmarked.