Facebook has been doing it for years. Twitter realised its power recently and began sending out weekly updates to its users. Even Pinterest and LinkedIn are not left behind. What am I on about? Email marketing.
Social media is in the ascendancy as far as online marketing is concerned. Facebook and Twitter reach a large number of people, with 140 characters and a click of the mouse. They are the easiest way to communicate with one’s clients and potential clients in the fastest way possible. The question then arises; does this mean that email marketing has lost its relevance? The quick answer to this question is no.
Remember, social media should be used to spark interest and create discussion about a topic or item of interest while email marketing should be used to deepen that interest into personal involvement, drawing in the client into a relationship with your company that goes beyond one hundred and forty words and into the realms of give and take.
While social media tools convey information to a large number of people, email marketing speaks to each individual at a more personal level. It encourages greater interaction between the company and the client by using triggers which precipitate an intended action. Furthermore, email marketing gives the sender a chance to enhance the relationship with the client throughout the sales cycles whilst encouraging fence-sitting potential customers to go further into the sales funnel.
The average email reader is assumed to be busy and vexed, having several issues at any one time competing for their attention. The email marketer must keep this in mind if they wish to hold the attention of the reader for more than a few seconds. In order to grab the needed attention, it is important that emails are tailored to reflect four features. Namely;
- Personalisation,
- segmentation,
- contact relevance and
- contact frequency.
Personalised emails that make the reader feel that the writer is speaking directly to them are more likely to be read until the end, and the intended action taken thereafter. In order to effectively personalise the email, it is necessary to segment subscribers into pertinent groups of common interest.
After segmenting subscribers, create relevant content that is tailored to that segment and send e-newsletters or eshots at a frequency common enough to be consistent without being insistent. Getting this balance right is what will make the difference between having one’s email continuously marked as spam (and deleted) and obtaining the response that is desired.
Social media can only say so much to the client or consumer of a product; being limited in words and scope of what can be written due to the wide range of its recipients. Using social media in conjunction with email can help the sender build up rapport with the intended recipient.
In this connected world where the personal touch is so often lacking, the use of email serves as the nearest substitute to the personal touch that can be found virtually.
Get in touch with us to help you create and launch successful email marketing campaigns. While at it, register to receive our Smurt Notes Digest, our email newsletter that we send out fortnightly.