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Archived in You might think the constant siege of inboxes by spammers has tarnished email’s reputation as a marketing tool forever. However, email still remains the workhorse of online marketing and integral to relationship building. Spam is merely its evil twin.
Email can start a dialogue, enhance your credibility and generate sales long after prospects have left your website. It’s even more potent when you’re smart enough to speak to recipients as individuals, rather than bellow the same speech to the entire crowd.
Relationship building
Capturing a customer’s email address when they visit your website should be your top priority. Because no matter how much flash animation and handpicked testimonials you throw at them, less than 5% (and that’s being generous) of visitors will be ready to buy on their first viewing.
So rather than hope they’ll come back on their own accord, you need to be able to maintain a line of communication with prospects long after they’ve left.
If you can capture their email address (e.g. in exchange for a free newsletter or eBook) then you can develop the sales process over time, because email can be a potent tool for relationship building and earning your prospects’ confidence.
Focus on the prospect
As any salesman will tell you, people like to do business with those they get to know and trust, which is exactly what email marketing campaigns are all about. Your strategy isn’t to force recipients into submission by mail bombing offer after offer, but to engage their interest with relevant messages that provide valuable and useful content.
Emails which offer to solve a prospect’s problems, help them sleep better at night and feel they’ve benefited from the interaction is how you can win trust, confidence and credit card numbers.
Rather than talking endlessly about yourself and how much profit you made last year, relationship marketing emails need to be focused on the needs of your prospect and how your product/service can enrich their lives.
As well as earning trust with valuable content, email can be used in many other ways to foster loyalty, such as invitations to live events, timely promotions (such as a birthday discount) and getting feedback on what your customers want from you.
Don’t blast, listen and engage
Perhaps the biggest impact of spam on email marketing has been the speeding up of the demise of lazily blasting the same message at every customer. People now receive so many marketing messages that if your email doesn’t appear to be relevant then you’re only a mouse click away from being deleted or blocked forever.
Simply repeating the same offer to every prospect in the hope of seducing a small number is no longer the smartest strategy. People now want and expect to be treated as individuals, and I’m not talking about just featuring their name in the subject line.
Modern tracking and analytics enables you to capture an endless stream of data on prospects. Along with their buying history and demographic profile, modern one-to-one digital campaigns utilising personalised URLs are able to record data on your prospects’ interests, preferences and desires. You can then segment and customise future messages pitched to appeal to each prospect’s personal triggers.
However, the process of fine tuning emails to be as relevant and personalised as possible never ends. Even after campaigns have been launched, you need to run A/B split tests on every adjustable element, such as the subject line, layout and the call to action at the end.
Watching how people interact with every email enables you to listen to what they’re thinking and how your message can be more finely tuned in the future.
Email is about one-to-one dialogue, rather than bellowing a single message
As with every aspect of marketing, the more relevant, timely and personalised your email marketing can be the more chance of provoking the right response, or as the popular mantra goes ‘delivering the right message to the right person at the right time’.
Delivering mass untargeted emails is now more likely to get you blacklisted than welcomed into people’s inboxes. However, modern email technology means we can now build and fine tune personalised one-to-one email campaigns which are pitched to match the desires of each individual prospect, leaving lazy email blasts to the spammers.
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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:47 am
Andy,
I could not agree more and we are helping customers all around the world do exactly what you suggest. And that is conduct person-to-person email marketing by using your ‘everyday’ emails.
Dave Kustin
CMO, WrapMail
November 1st, 2008 at 11:20 am
The New Email Marketing â Talking to Customers Individually | bda - Buckingham Design Associates…
Email can start a dialogue, enhance your credibility and generate sales long after prospects have left your website. It’s even more potent when you’re smart enough to speak to recipients as individuals, rather than bellow the same speech to the entire …
November 8th, 2008 at 8:11 am
[...] The New Email Marketing – Talking to Customers Individually [...]
November 8th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
This is a way to ethical e-marketing with higher chances to generate a business. We are following same method of personalized reviews/messages for our products. Great article.
November 12th, 2008 at 3:20 am
Thanks for posting, definitely going to subscribe!See you on my reader.
November 19th, 2008 at 9:20 am
[...] andy added an interesting post today on The New Email Marketing â
November 20th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
[...] In addition, I think email marketing start going after individuals rather than the same email to everyone. This could help us to build relationship with customers and focus on prospect. Here is another link about why we should do this. (link) [...]
November 25th, 2008 at 4:43 am
[...] andy wrote an interesting post today onThe New Email Marketing â?? Talking to Customers Individually | bda …Here’s a quick excerptRather than talking endlessly about yourself and how much profit you made last year, relationship marketing emails need to be focused on the needs of your prospect and how your product/service can enrich their lives. … [...]
December 5th, 2008 at 7:43 am
[...] andy wrote an interesting post today onThe New Email Marketing â?? Talking to Customers IndividuallyHere’s a quick excerptAs any salesman will tell you, people like to do business with those they get to know and trust, which is exactly what email marketing campaigns are all about. Your strategy isn’t to force recipients into submission by mail bombing … [...]