Successful Email Campaigns: We Share The Secrets!
As an incredibly effective digital marketing tool, email campaigns are an integral part of building a brand online. They’re inexpensive, allow for measurability, and typically see a high engagement rate and ROI. It’s amazing how simple it is to create meaningful connections with stakeholders through email marketing by sharing stories, insights and adding value directly to their inbox!
An ‘email newsletter’ looks different for every business and serves a different purpose within each digital strategy. For some businesses it’s simply building the relationship with existing and past customers – a soft way of massaging relationships. For other businesses it’s an instantly measurable sales tool. Either way, if you’re not regularly sending emails to your database, you’re most likely missing out on an opportunity to connect.
Blackjet started working with a client who had never sent emails to their customers, yet they had 400+ emails in their database (small high value customer base). The first email was a soft, ‘hello’, value add, and invitation to connect/reply. The results? This client received email replies saying “it was great to hear from you – I’ve been meaning to connect about XYZ”, “Awesome to see what’s been happening at “the company"”. This is a great example of building connections that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
For another client, Blackjet put together a sales campaign announcing a new product and within 24 hours their inbox was flooded with emails saying “order me one/two” — resulting in $100,000’s of business (high purchase price product).
So, how do we do it?
As you can see from the examples above, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to email campaigns. The language, design, and content always vary, but there are some key points that should always be considered.
Here are some of the Blackjet secrets to ensuring clients’ email marketing soars:
Sharing relevant insights + updates
When writing an email campaign, never lose sight of who the email is actually for: the audience. Is this information relevant to them? What updates do they need to be aware of? Is this something the audience will actually be interested in reading?
Remember, your audience may not be aware of important information that seems obvious or trivial to you and your team.
It can be easy to simply spout off how great your business/company is – being mindful of this sets up a campaign that adds value and leaves the reader wanting more next time.
If the email is a sales campaign, is it easy to purchase? Easy to click through for more information? Is the relevant information on the landing page/website?
Personalising the content
When your audience reads an email from your company, they want to feel like it was written by a human, not a robot. We recommend incorporating an address from your CEO or MD. This personalises the content, establishes a sense of authority, and helps your CEO’s personal branding. Read more about the importance of personalised content on our blog.
Selecting imagery with people is another great way to humanise content. Read more about why we need human content here.
Truly personalising the content can be done by adding “Hi [customer name/Christine]” in the email – it’s not possible to get more personalised than that!
Segmentation is important. For example, a property management company has tenants and property owners – the content should be different for each audience.
Refining the language
The language used in email newsletters should reflect brand values, while still maintaining professionalism and credibility. Remember, professional doesn’t have to mean boring!
Ensure to avoid jargon, proofread (twice) for spelling and grammar mistakes, and keep the brand voice consistent across channels.
Not overdoing it
Email newsletters should be kept short, sweet, and simple. We don’t need to update your audience on every important detail from the past month (that's what social media is for!). Summarise the highlights, remind your audience of important features, dates and events, and include links so the audience can easily access more information if they need to.
Generally, unless the email is sales/promotion focused, a market update and links to some key recent blogs/content is a really great visual way to showcase the business and add value.
Overall, nurturing relationships via email marketing is a simple and effective way to build brand and momentum – and there are lots of ways to do it. Email newsletters are just one way Blackjet builds momentum for our clients, so their business can fly high!
If you are unsure about the best way to achieve results for your email campaign and overall brand building online with social media, let's talk. Contact me, Christine Westbury on christine@blackjet.co.nz, call 021911958 or message me here.