If you offer products or services on your website, you likely have a dedicated base of customers who simply need regular reminders to let them know about sales and promotions. And while using email to capitalize on these customers is a good thing, capturing new sales in addition to these is always the goal. Without further ado, here a few tips for gaining additional customers the next time you send a bulk email…
1. Focus on education – Email marketing is changing from a primarily sales-focused medium (30% off on menswear through Wednesday!) to an educational one (3 Easy Ways to Tie a Manly Tie Knot). Educational content not only gets more interest from the headline alone, but translates into click-through as customers go to your site for more information or resources.
2. Mobile is key – If you’re going to rely on sales emails, and there’s often a good reason why you should, then remembering the role of mobile is critical. Many emails recipients now use smartphones as their primary means of accessing email, meaning that reaching them with autoresponder emails at appropriate times (restaurant deals around noon, happy hour deals around 4 or 5, etc) is more profitable than a blanket email sent at 8 in the morning. Remember to optimize your emails for mobile users, however, or you may find many of your emails ending up in the trash.
3. Target your emails – Just as you might send appropriate emails at different times in a day, so might you send different emails to different target groups. For example, women may respond better to your default emails, so sending men a slightly different email could let to much higher conversion rates. Experiment to find out the best strategy here.
4. Respect your recipients – The recipients on your email blasting lists have given you permission to email them directly. Don’t blow it by sending too many emails, attempting shady or spammy tactics, or by selling them too aggressively on your products.