Who told emails are outdated?
They are not. Not until Jeff Bezos gets hold of your Whatsapp number and chats about opening an Amazon Smart Shop in your adjacent lane.
Do emails matter today in this Insta-world of few letters?
Yes, they do.
As per Statista reports, in 2019, active email accounts crossed a whopping 5.6 billion and as per the 2020 reports, the existing 3.9 billion active email users will soar to 4.3 billion by the year 2023.
Perhaps nobody writes elaborate personal emails anymore, but in business, emails still call a few shots. If you aren’t sure, check your inbox (or inboxes) and see how many welcome or promotional emails vie for your attention.
Subscription forms, notifications, new launches, festival offers, feedback on a recent purchase, and much more! Your inbox throngs with eager approval requests, warm invitations, and seductive sales intimations.
Emails remain a strong medium of communication for businesses. They can be personal, without being offensive. They can be direct, without slamming it onto your customers’ faces. And, they are flexible: you get the time, space and tempo to spill your ‘secrets’ without impinging on your customers’ privacy, priorities or convenience.
WHY EMAIL?
It brought sheer excitement; the excitement of your favourite retailer or magazine greeting you by name and writing (long) mails telling how precious a customer you are and why you deserve that special discount or surprise gift. Those well-written, polite and pampering letters made you melt and extend your subscription for two more years.
Thirty years of the World Wide Web and we still melt like chocolate on a hot pan at an exclusive “for you” email from a retailer. Emails aren’t just the easiest and most convenient communication tool for businesses. They can be shape-shifted to powerful dynamites in brand-building, brand loyalty and marketing.
Emails are found to generate the maximum ROI (return on investment) among the digital marketing channels, for ten years in a row. They are the most cost-effective and successful communication medium to get into a one-on-one relationship with a potential or existing customer.
Advertisements might be popular but are time-bound and expensive. Facebook is inevitable but generic. Pick any other channels of marketing and they all fall into similar categories. Email alone enjoys the luxury of directly accessing your customers’ attention and connecting with each one of them in a personal manner. As per the studies by McKinsey & Company, email remains 40 times more effective in getting customers than social media channels like Facebook or Twitter.
The fact that a lump sum of the new businesses especially for small and medium entrepreneurs stemS from existing satisfied customers - one-timers or the regulars – gives it all the more reasons to connect, engage and retain them through effective email communication. Let every email – congratulations, invitations, brand announcements, updates and offers – uniquely connect with each one of your customers and you will soon see your sales and customer retention graphs riding high.
Well-crafted emails that are segmented and targeted at individual customers do work wonders for your business – if you know how to do it right.
THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF A WELL-WRITTEN BUSINESS EMAIL
Are you preparing for an email campaign? Before you churn out quick templates for samples, think again.
Since an email is an elaborate form of content, it gives you the opportunity to get eloquent more than any other form of marketing. Nevertheless, you need to be cautious about the content or else your marketing efforts will go down the drain without any impact on your customer.
Ask yourself what would be your response to such a mail if you receive it as a customer.
1. STYLE: Would I be interested to read it? Or is it too dull and boring? Do I like the way it addresses me?
2. TONE: Is it human – friendly, polite and personal or does it sound automated and detached?
3. NARRATION: Is it too long? Too short? Repetitive? Vague?
4. THE CTA? Is the call to action clear and direct?
If you aren’t sure enough, then get good copywriters or content creators to make a few different templates for your segmented customers. A professional writer can always get the blush back to pale and dull email drafts! They will know how to blend in the service and the sales and balance the personal and the professional.
The Sweet Notes – Building a personal rapport with your customers
1.Make your mails exclusive
Next time your customer service department gets ready to send those ‘best of the month’ or ‘new launch’ emails, ask them to check if they are segregated.
How do you segregate your promotional emails? Yes, the news is the same but the greetings make the difference.
Categorise your core customers, potential prospectives and the complete database-strangers into separate segments. You can segregate your customer-base depending on the purchase behaviour – The frequency of the purchase, the recentness and the purchase value.
You can also segment them based on their activities on your website. Like how Amazon tracks your browsing history and keeps filling your inbox with gentle reminders, changes on your ‘cart-ed’ products, or new product updates that line up with your previous choices.
Send separate emails for each of these segments and you will see the response.
An email that acknowledges their customer status – new, regular, multiple purchases, or premium member – provides a ‘sense of recognition’ to your customers. In a way, it makes them feel ‘visible’ - that they and their purchase equations are noticed, acknowledged and appreciated.
2.Make it all about them
Customer-centric is a clichéd word. Yes, but when you have so much to tell about yourself and impress your customer, how can you cut down the monologue and make a conversation?
Well, perhaps you need help from a professional writer to draft the perfect love-letter for your precious crowd! A letter that would not only interest and impress your customers but also invokes them into action.
Whether you are introducing yourself to a prospective, or taking it further with a loyal customer, write about what they can get from you more than what you do. Tell them how they benefit from their relationship with you. If the promotion of your business means getting things done for them in a better and easier way, and you could convince them about it in your email, you have a faithful customer in your cart!
3. Usher them into the benefits
Write your emails in such a way that they will get to know the possibilities of benefits as your customer.
Your website may say it all and guide the visitors through all the service pages and privileges, but receiving a personal note from the seller is like having your personal tour guide.
Provide links to service pages that would benefit them and info pages that they may not otherwise notice. Tell them how you think they might have missed a few things about your recent updates and that you would love to show them around. Your customer would happily follow!
In this sweet way, you can get them to respond and hit the CTA buttons. Even if immediate sales don’t happen, they would love to stay with your brand!
4.Keep them engaged
Entertain and educate your customers through your emails, that they will look forward to hearing from you. Well-written emails are great pointers to your online content. They can be used as effective channels to introduce your customers to “more of you”.
Let your emails not be just self-centered shout-outs for your business. Educate your customers on relevant features of the industry, your product or service that would be added or useful information for them.
It could be a peek into a manufacturing secret or the story on how “people like them” and “their needs” inspired you to start your venture. It could be a subscription link to your blogs or to your YouTube videos. It could be an “inside” pic from your company, a celebration, a project, a happy moment of the staff – anything that connects with the email recipient and trigger a sense of involvement.
Even if the emails do not land all the customers on your extended content, they nurture familiarity and goodwill. If your emails are engaging enough, with time, they will win by leading your customers into closer interactions.
5. Impress them and win them over!
Impress your readers with a few good customer-testimonials.
Tell them you intend to provide them with the best and make them happy the same way.
Tell them why customer-testimonials and feedback matter to you and how you are keen on building relationships, and not just business.
Ask them for their happy stories and encourage them to share. Lead them to the testimonial page. Make them feel comfortable and encouraged through a friendly, human tone. Nobody wants a robotic message urging one to make someone else’s business better!
CONCLUSION
You will succeed in connecting your email marketing with your business funnel if you can trace your customers’ progress up the funnel and effectively use email to move them up further.
Crafting a high- quality, professional email that connects and communicates effectively with your customers as well as your target audience, isn’t easy. But if you master the art of engaging and captivating them through your emails, it would take your business and customer-relations to wider frontiers.
Would like to know more about creating impressive emails that cater to all your segmented customer-base and win them over as loyal customers? Contact ThePenditsfor the best of creative writers who can deliver the most engaging content for your business.