How To Provide Value With Your Email Marketing And Avoid Spamming
Creating and providing value with your email marketing is no easy task.
Email marketing is a highly measurable, cost-effective form of marketing that provides a higher ROI than any other channel. Not only can it increase your businesses conversion rate but it can also change your customers’ perception of your business drastically.
Writing engaging informative communications takes time and research as you should be looking to provide value to your customers at every possible opportunity. Providing useful, objective information that addresses common issues and pains your customers are likely to experience is a good starting point and once you get comfortable with providing valuable information that fits your company’s brand values, you will start to find it easy to supplement this info with sales messages that will be well received.
Read on for some tips and tricks on how to provide real value to your customers and prospects:
Find the Expert and the Editor
The editor/ writer is responsible for writing the copy itself, this person will have excellent English skills and will be responsible for writing customer focused content, in line with your brand image that really captivates the reader.
The Expert is generally someone who has been at your company for an extended period of time, they not only know the company but the whole industry inside out. The Expert will have years of knowledge about your sector and be able to spot trends and provide expert opinions and insights.
By pairing these two together you will be able to provide well-written content with real life insights and opinions providing real value to your customer.
Understand Your Customers Wants And Needs
Understanding what drives your customer and what they really want and need is essential in creating valuable content.
As previously mentioned, providing useful information that addresses common issues and problems your customers are likely to experience, is a great way to develop a relationship and build that trust between your business and your customer.
Segment your customers
Segmenting your customers and prospects into groups with similar demographics, interests and purchase history will allow you to provide more relevant, personalised content to specific individuals.
As different customers have very different needs, segmenting your contacts is essential to providing them with quality targeted content that is more valuable to a specific group.
Utilise Promotional Emails
According to Convince and Convert, 44% of email recipients make at least one purchase per year based on a promotional email. Most companies’ promotional emails are often ignored as they fail to add value and attract the customers attention. The key is to engage the customer and show them attractive offers and information that get them to act quickly.
Common examples of successful promotional emails include:
- Buy one get one free offers
- Limited time discounts
- Gifts and gift cards
- Added perks and services
Measure And Track The Success Of Your Emails
Tracking what worked and what didn’t with your email marketing is crucial to improving your content and influencing future communications. The beauty of email marketing is that it is incredibly easy to compare and contrast email campaigns using statistics such as open rate, click through rate and bounce rate etc.
Creating reports on the success of each campaign will allow you to see how well each email performed and then identify actionable strategies to improve results in future campaigns.
How To Avoid SPAMMING
In today’s world spam emails are everywhere and are flooding people’s inboxes at ever increasing rates. With lots of countries passing laws and legislation that email marketers must comply with.
Be sure to familiarise yourself with the legislation in your specific country as it varies slightly from country to country.
Here are a few key features you need to be aware of before sending out your email marketing campaigns:
Always Gain Permission
There are 2 forms of permission when it comes to email marketing: Implied Permission and Express Permission.
- Implied Permission is where you have an existing business relationship with an individual. For example: Current customers, donators, website members etc.
- Express Permission is where an individual has specifically granted you permission to send them email campaigns usually through a subscribe form on your website.
Companies who obtain permission before sending email campaigns receive far higher open rates and click through rates than those who do not.
Let People to Unsubscribe
Making it easy for people to unsubscribe is a must and actually required by law. Your email should really include an obvious option to unsubscribe already whether it’s in the footer of the email or the header. If you use Gmail then the option will always be in the header above the email anyway.
Don’t be Deceptive
This may go without saying, but don’t include any false or misleading messages within your emails; however on the odd chance your plan is to ruin your businesses credibility and reputation then go straight ahead this is a guaranteed method to do so.
Don’t Share Your Email List
Again this may be obvious but sharing your email list is a huge no no. Not only are you going against GDPR legislation and risking a potential fine, but it is also entirely counterproductive to your business.
Final Thoughts
By using these tips you should be able to create valuable content for your customers that builds up your relationship with them and improves your businesses reputation.
You now have the ability to produce a constant stream of content/ information that keeps customers engaged, informed and up to date with current trends, business news and sales offers.
If this sounds like too much effort then leave it up to us. Inbox offers bespoke email marketing services for B2B businesses. Our email campaigns are designed to get you noticed by the people that matter.
Click here to find out how we can help boost your business.
