Have you ever come across emails that talk about some newly launched products and schemes that are useful for you? Emails like these are part of the evolving email marketing trend, which is growing more than ever and is liked by the customers as well. They are glad to know about something new especially if they find the info interesting.
Earlier, email campaigns were about simple one way messages, but now they are developed to auto responders and in technical terms they are known as email 1.0 and even better are called as email 2.0.
With these technologies at their disposal, the entrepreneurs can effectively send tailor made messages to their perspective customers. These emails are usually based on the interests, shopping history and interests of the customers.
While planning email campaigns can prove to be really useful for your website. Email campaigns are not just about sending new messages about your products to the customers everyday, which could be pestering for them. It is about building a relationship and rapport, so that your purpose of sending those mails bears some fruits in terms of bringing sales opportunities. Here are a few things to be considered before going ahead with your email campaign:
1) Choosing a Third Party Service
If you have decided to opt for an email campaign for the promotion of your website, it is important to choose the software carefully. The CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems are available in different ranges and varieties. There are some as simple as database models, while the advanced options include shopping carts, sales force management and email behavior campaigns etc.
You can carefully choose a system which provides you detailed information about the preferences, likings and shopping patterns of the customers. This kind of detailed information allows a website owner or a businessman to tailor the communication more effectively.
Most of these systems offer training for the entrepreneur and support during the learning process of campaigns. So you just have to choose between basic and advanced CRM, available to guide and assist you for the email campaign.
2) Make a Database
Make a database of all the contacts you have, even if it is a small number. Launch your email campaign with a well tailored message and start sending them mails. Make sure that you have to remind the customers about your products by giving gentle reminders and not by plaguing their inboxes with mails every day.
Under an effective email campaign, maximum two mails in a month are enough to remind and inform a person about the products and offer. Just make sure that the message being sent must be effective and efficient and should not compromise with quality.
3) Collect More Info
You will need to have more contacts for successful email campaigns in future, for which you can add forms, where the browsers can provide their basic contact information like email address. This will allow you have a larger database, thus more number of expected conversions.
4) Use Auto-Responder Emails
Using auto respond emails will make your email campaign easy to go. All you need to do is set the emails with time and date, when you want to shoot your emails. It is more effective, if you add links to auto respond emails, where the receiver can click for more information if interested. This increases the possibility of the person to visit your website and if they find it worth, you will witness an increase in sales.
Have you come across mails like Today’s suggestions for you? These mails are triggers that are attached with the links you click. Once you click on a link in a specific mail, you will receive a message giving more information about a similar product that was there in the first link.
5) Be Careful about the Content
Design the subject line and content carefully. Keep it simple and to the point. Know what you want to convey to the target audience, you can even hire a third party service for making it more professional.
This email from AmazonLocal is crisp and the Call to Action is clearly visible here. The company wants the users to click the link in this email to tell them what they like and dislike.
In your mails, texts and link both should be clickable, as shown in the mail above. The mail should be well designed with limited and decent colour usage. Avoid using words like free and too stylish emails, which may land them in spam category.
While working on an email campaigns, it is imperative that you are crystal clear about the message you want to put across. Sometimes it could be about strengthening relationships and sometimes just about a new offer or a product.
How to Evaluate the Performance of your Email Campaign
You can create a custom advanced segment in Google analytics to monitor the traffic on your website. Once in a month, check out which mails brought desired results and which did not. If the outcome is not up to the mark it is the time for some reality check. You can launch a test campaign on your top customers and see how they react to the mails. If you receive a rather dull response from them, there is a problem with the content. Try making it more interesting by putting colorful images and offer some perks to your customers.
Think about the budget you have, do a return on investment analysis (ROI). You need to remember that the content of the message must be apt and your customers find it interesting. With rightly chosen CRM and an effective message, you are good to go!
Hire a professional web design company which would not only develop a website for you but also implement a terrific email campaign to bring in more sales for you
