Do you make a sale every time you send an email?
Every time I send emails I make sales. Every time. As a business owner, you have to recognize the tremendous opportunity of email to communicate consistently and cheaply with your customers. If you do it the right way, that is.
Email marketing is easy. It’s too easy, because many businesses dabble in it, or do it incorrectly, and ditch it. Wrong! No type of marketing will ever be effective if you’re just throwing information (sales pitches, no less!) at people, hoping something will stick. It’s not about you.
As far as the customer is concerned, it’s all about them. Always.
It’s essential that you remember this when you’re sending email. But most businesses miss the point. They’re not sending emails with any consistency, and if they do, they’re focused on “SELLING!”
Yesterday’s rules were about reaching buyers and selling buyers. Not today. Today you need to engage them to make sales.
Engagement
How do you engage customers instead of imposing yourself upon them? That’s easy. Ask them questions. Initiate conversations through social media, your blog and email marketing. And participate in their conversations. If you’re engaging through Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn, then you know what customers are talking about. Be part of it!
Use email marketing as an opportunity to give them offers and incentives. Include promotions in your emails that encourage customers to refer their colleagues and friends. This expands your influence, engages customers and creates profits for you. Remind them to like you on Facebook and follow you on Twitter to take advantage of foursquare and other opportunities.
Email can bring together many of your vehicles of customer engagement.
Of course, email marketing is far from a new idea. Most of us complain about the unwanted volume we receive. But if you’re communicating something people care about, you’re on the right track. You’re already standing out from lots of other businesses trying to be heard.
The other requirement is creativity. From the subject line, to the imagery, to the incentive, to the point of the email, you have to be creative and compelling. You have to be different—really different! This doesn’t mean you need to spend lots of money on this creative. You just need to think about it and be creative.
The Hotmail example
Take a hint from Hotmail. The email service provider had over 12 million users when Microsoft acquired them. Did they wait for people to find out about them? Of course not! Hotmail included a small signature at the bottom of all outgoing emails, inviting recipients to sign-up. Brilliant viral email marketing!
Sending emails can create amazing results for your business too. How can you develop your own Hotmail story?
