Email marketing tips
Today’s blog is about email marketing tips – getting them to the right people and how to embrace unsubscribes!
A number of businesses worry about sending emails in case recipients don’t like it. It’s one of the most common concerns – The fear of rejection. Rejection in email marketing terms is when someone unsubscribes from your list but in all cases, unsubscribes are a good thing!
Why? They tell you something – they are key insight. The people who unsubscribe probably weren’t going to buy anything from you anyway. The other alternative is that your email is not useful and relevant to them and, if that’s the case it should prompt you to review your content!
Creating a Customer Persona
Do you know exactly who you want to target with your email? In other words, do you know who your ideal prospects are?
What some businesses forget to remember is how vital it is to create your customer persona – the person who represents your target market. Most businesses have more than one.
To create a target persona, you need to list everything you know about that person, from gender, interests, location and any other relevant information. This will help you create specific compelling content that resonates with that prospect.
Adding a video to email
To add greater interactivity and promote engagement with your promotional emails, one very successful marketing strategy is to include a video. Both B2C and B2B marketers use email as an efficient and cost effective way to provide valuable, relevant content to prospects. Here are our other email marketing tips that will help bring your business relevant prospects and advocates:
Video marketing is finally gaining momentum
Email newsletters
People won’t read the newsletter if it includes nothing but bulky, repetitive, unsatisfying paragraphs. Thanks to the increasing popularity of video-friendly mobile devices and social sites like YouTube, video marketing is finally gaining momentum. Video is a highly effective marketing tool – no other approach generates sharing and engagement, boosts search traffic and conversations to the levels that video does. 100 million internet users watch video every single day and 7 in 10 people view brands more positively after watching interesting video content from them. Consumers are 27.4 times more likely to click-through online video ads than standard banners.
A good example of effective video marketing would be the Sainsbury’s Christmas advert, The supermarket giant partnered with the Royal British Legion to tell the story of Christmas Day in the trenches of the First World War. The content of the video has very little to do with their business model, but because the video is emotionally stimulating and resonates with our core values it has consequently appealed with the masses and led us to respect Sainsbury’s and keep the brand’s name at the forefront of our minds and on the tip of our tongue!
Another great example of effective video marketing is the John Lewis Christmas Campaigns. This year they introduced the nation to it’s new favourite cuddly character, Monty the penguin! The ad now has more than 14 million views on YouTube in less than a month and the Monty and Mabel themed merchandise has been flying off the shelves in stores and online. In fact, they are currently sold out and are being successfully sold on eBay for substantial amounts more than the retail price.
What potential prospects DON’T want
Potential prospects DON’T want to receive 5 emails a day about everything you have to say unless there’s something in it for them. Take yourself for example, how likely are you to fill out a survey for a company with no benefit to you whatsoever. On the other hand, how likely are you to fill out a survey if it offers you 25% off your next order? The key is to push offers and incentivise the prospect to take an action.
It’s all well and good having the best product in the world but if nobody knows it exists how will it benefit your business? When you’re telling people about your product, make them WANT to know about it by writing interesting promotional emails and include video to generate more sales.
