Aside from social media, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to connect with your customers and build a relationship with them. However, extreme care must be used when doing email marketing. This is because the email is something sacred in a way. It is a direct line to your current or potential customer.
They gave you permission to email them, and thus it is important that you respect this and avoid spamming or promoting too many of your products or services. Unlike social media, where they were the ones who willingly followed your Facebook page, Twitter account, or Instagram account, email is something personal. People check their emails regularly, and so if you do not use email marketing properly, they will unsubscribe from your email list.
This article will provide you with the best practices in email marketing, so that you can enhance your relationship with your customer and turn them into loyal advocates and brand ambassadors.
1. Understand the Pain Points of Your Customer
The key to delivering value to your email subscribers is to understand their pain points. What are their frustrations? What do they aspire for? By knowing their pain points, you will be able to craft products and services that will solve their pain points.
Your emails have to show empathy, or understanding of their situation. It has to be about them. Even when you promote your business to them, it has to matter to them. So the first step is to understand their context. What is their worldview like? How can your business penetrate that worldview and help improve their life?
2. Limit the Selling, Focus on the Relationship
Email marketing should be a marathon tool for you. It is for developing a strong and engaged relationship with your customer for a long time. Don’t see email as a platform to make a quick sale. That is too short-term thinking, and your client will see right through that and will likely unsubscribe from your list.
The only way to cultivate a healthy relationship with your email subscribers is by delivering high-quality content that is relevant to them. Ask yourself whether the emails that you deliver to them are useful and relevant. If they do not meet both criteria, you need to immediately change your content.
Be a great curator of your niche. Compile things that they will want to read. Write things that matter to them. Provoke and challenge their perspectives. Inspire them. Make them care about what you deliver to them.
Once they have started to trust you and engage with you, then that is the time you highlight your products or services once in a while. Once again, not a hard sell, but more of how your business can help them achieve what they want. Focus on the value that your products or services can give to them, instead of focusing on your business product or the price of it.
3. Focus on Your Authentic Voice and Your Story
Let your real voice show in the way you write emails to them. Make it conversational. Make it in a friendly way. Make it caring.
Don’t be boring, and instead enchant them with stories. Share anecdotes or personal things that are relevant to what you want to teach or share with them.
Be as human as you can as you do storytelling when you do email marketing.
Don’t be like the typical email marketer who is so businesslike and formulaic that all they want to get their email subscribers to hand over their money.
Get splendid at telling stories. Practice in the real world, and try to apply them when you craft your emails.
4. Use Basic Copywriting
Think about your email titles very well. Does the title indicate it is useful? Does it make people curious? Will it make people want to read the email? This is where copywriting comes in, because it will help you increase the odds of your subscribers reading your email.
Remember that you are competing with other businesses and people who are also harnessing email marketing. So make your emails stand out with good copywriting practices such as crafting effective headlines.
Another essential in copywriting is crafting a call to actions. For every email, you must have a call to action. What do you want your readers to do? Share the email? Answer a survey? Click a link to read something? So take the time to determine what your call to action will be in your email.
Sprinkle them across the email post so that the reader will always be reminded. Make it easy for them. The idea is that you have to train your readers to respond and act to your emails. Regular call to actions will help you do that.
5. Have Some Variety
Don’t send the same type of email all the time or else it gets too repetitive, and your readers will tune out. One kind of email to send from time to time is a walkthrough or tutorial on how to properly use your product or service. Once they see how easy and convenient it is to use it, this might compel them to purchase your product. Try to invest in a good video editor software or freelancer to help you out with this video tutorial.
Since they chose to be on your email list, you should be treating them like VIPs. Give them exclusive discounts and promotions that they will not get elsewhere. They should get first dibs on your new launches and promotional activities.
Finally, another type of email that you can send out is testimonial emails because they give your business social proof. Collect testimonials from satisfied customers and highlight them sometimes in your email marketing.
Final Thoughts
Email can be a powerful medium for you to connect to your customers. Always remember that they are not just an email address. There is a person behind that email. So take the time to craft wonderful and compelling emails that provide value and help them achieve the better version of themselves thanks to your product or service.
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