How to make the most out of email marketing

How to make the most out of email marketing

Author: Natalie Banks - Digital Marketing Specialist

Email marketing is a great way to engage your current database of customers. It’s also one of the quickest ways to expand your reach – you can hit your entire list with the same message within a short space of time.

HubSpot have done a writeup recently based on the data provided by litmus.com, which offers some insights into how valuable email marketing can be for your business.

One of the statements they made was that for every $1 (£0.75) spent, $42 (£31) is generated, which is a 4,200% ROI.

They also stated that there are around 4 billion daily email users, so as platforms go, it’s a solid one.

(Almost) everyone uses emails these days, whether frequently or infrequently, and people expect to the signed up to newsletters from businesses they interact with, mainly so they can keep up to date with company changes, offers and new product launches.

But what’s the right way to utilise email marketing so you don’t lose your subscribers? Well, there’s good and bad approaches to how you market to your existing list of customers, and we’ll run you through how best to tackle this.

Provide quality content

So, this one is quite broad and encompasses a lot, but it should always be the main goal when you are sending communications to your contact list.

Whilst this list of customers may have taken interest in your business during their buying process, they need a reason to stay loyal and buy from you again.

If you haven’t got any quality content to send out (helpful, engaging or thought provoking), it’s perhaps not the right time to send any communications.

Quality content can be around business achievements that enhance their view on your brand, either because your team has become certified in a new service, you have expanded your team or you are introducing new products and services.

It could also refer to content that promotes offers to existing customers that could benefit them in some way or another, either by offering discount or giving them exclusive access to a new product.

Make the content engaging

As well as creating quality content, this should also encourage the customer to want to find out more information, which is a good opportunity to direct them to your website. Once the user hits your website, you can then track their journey through your Google Analytics dashboard.

In a time where everyone wants to consume their content differently – some want bite-sized chunks, others are quite happy to read long form content, its important to ensure your content is consumable by all. Try offering your customers different ways to consume your content – some may want to read your updates in the form of a blog, others are quite happy to be directed to your social media stream.

If your content isn’t engaging, you will struggle to get users to visit your website and you’ll find your bounce rate is much higher on your email marketing reports. A high bounce rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing for your business – you can still be building brand awareness – however, if you are aiming to convert, you need to engage your contact list.

Welcome email

Welcome emails are a great way to make your customers feel valued, especially if you are a small, family run dealership as there is a sense of pride when you spend your money with a small business.

It also gives you the opportunity to add a survey to the email so you can see what the customer thought of the buying process. This kind of feedback can be invaluable to any business.

If you want to take it one step further, you could try to improve your interaction rate by offering an incentive if the survey is completed.

Newsletters

This is one of the most popular emails businesses choose to send as it allows you to consolidate your updates into one email, rather than sending multiple per week.

Newsletters can cover business events, new product/services launches and any offers you have running all within one email.

You can make it more appealing by adding images and links to keep you audience engaged.

Offers/promotions

This is likely to engage your customers the most as it’s something that benefits them personally, whether it’s a discount or a free upgrade, it might be the sway the customer needs to purchase from your business over a competitor.

You could also track the success of your email marketing campaign by using a unique code that the user must quote in order to receive the discount.

Events

As a car dealer, holding events might be a regular occurrence, whether it’s an open day or inviting customers to come and see a brand-new model.

Utilising email marketing allows you to recruit attendees by providing them with reasons to attend, from special discounts to free gifts.

If you think email marketing could benefit you but don’t have the time or resource to dedicate to creating and sending emails, speak to the team here at Autoweb Design, who would be happy to provide you with a bespoke quote.