Use the power of mail to build a relationship with your customer

 

With numerous ways to connect with customers through social media, e-mail and newsletter marketing may not be high on your priorities.

However, study after study by market research companies shows that consumers still prefer to be contacted by e-mail by the brands they have purchased from.

Think about it from your own personal experience. You receive an e-mail offer from a brand you trust, an exclusive offer that's just for you based on the purchases you've made before. It's highly likely that you'll open the e-mail, even if you don't intend to purchase. You'll check the e-mail in case there's something that's interesting.

Creating an e-mail marketing strategy is a great investment in developing a long-term relationship with your customers, and it doesn't have to take up too much of your time to make it work for your business. Because once created, you can automate the newletters to be sent.

Here are some tips for best practice in e-mail marketing:

  1. Create a series of emails that you can send to your customer, start with a simple "Thank you for the first order" e-mail. Create 2nd and 3rd e-mails to the customer, these can be set-up either following seasonal events or by the type of purchases the customer has made.
  2. Keep them regular, but not too frequent, no-one likes to be bombarded by e-mails. In fact people will unsubscribe if the frequency of the e-mails become annoying. Test the frequency to assess what's best for your business.
  3. Get customer feedback so you can refine your messaging.
  4. Create a newsletter cycle so that as new customers join your mailing list, they get the first, 2nd, 3rd email in the series you've created.
  5. Make the message in subject header eye-catching. Test the message to see which gets the biggest open rates.
  6. Unsubscribe feature. Its important to observe the regulations for e-mail marketing. In the UK, The Data Protection Act is there to protect consumers and businesses. You must give customers the right to unsubscribe. With the new GDPR rules coming into force in May, it's vital that you follow the rules. For more information on GDPR visit the ICO website