by: Javy
In an age that places so much emphasis on the importance of social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, emailing your customers might sound a little archaic and perhaps even counter-intuitive.
This is not the case: not everyone is on a social network and a good number of users who are still attached to their email for various reasons. To disregard the marketing possibilities of email would be unwise. However, advertising to your customers through email is a task that should be approached more precariously simply because email users have become so used to spam and annoying advertisements that they need only to click their mouse twice to block your emails forever. You have to catch their attention in order to stand out so that your customer doesn’t’ just consider your message to be useless spam.
But how do you even get your customers to give you their email addresses? Offer them incentives. Walk into any major clothing store and you’ll notice is that discount “member” cards—usually around 10 percent—are given to customers who hand over their email addresses. No matter what your business is, you should try and appeal to your customer in this way by offering them discounts or relevant information in order to receive their email address.
Once you have their addresses, it becomes a game of figuring out how to appeal to them all at the same time while managing not to get your messages shoved into the spam folder. Here are some tips to help you with that.
(1) Make Sure Your Customers Know Who You Are
The most important thing to make sure of is that your customers know and trust your email address. That means having an email address with the name of the business in it, so that they don’t see an email with a subject line that says “FREE COUPONS” sent by johnnybenton123@yahoo.com. Rest assured that email would be going into the spam folder.
(2) Make the Subject Line Interesting
Convincing your customer to open your email is also tricky. You have to find a way to entice them, much like you did with getting their address. The “FREE COUPONS” example above is creepy because of the address, and because its lacks details. Having specific details in the subject line (Free coupons for what? Information about what?) will raise your chances that your customer will open the email.
(3) Use Proper Grammar in Your Email
Make sure that your emails are grammatically sound so that your customers are confident in your professionalism. Poor grammar reflects laziness at best and apathy at worst. It’s always a good idea to get someone to proofread over what you send out.
(4) Always Include Relevant Information in Your Messages
Besides the contents of the message itself, you’re going to want to include the following at the bottom of every message: the address of your business, phone number, email address, and hours of operation. It wouldn’t hurt to attach any helpful blurbs of well-written reviews by users or publications either.
Sadly, there is no getting around the fact that some of your customers are going to trash your emails no matter how much effort you put into writing them or making them visually appealing. That’s just how it goes. However, keeping these tips in mind will give you a better chance of keeping a strong percentage of your customers informed via email. And an emailed coupon or piece of information may be the deciding factor for a customer deciding to do business with a competitor or with you.
