One of the most popular forms of marketing communication in today’s technological world is e-mail marketing, with an estimated 105 billion emails being sent across the world every day. When constructing these emails for your business, there are many things to think about to ensure that your messaging is impactful and worth the time and money it takes for you to get a return on your marketing investment.
Similar to the way we advise businesses to ensure their overall branding is well constructed to be perceived in the desired way by potential and existing customers, the visual appeal of your emails needs to hold the key to getting those all-important sales and leads.
Why use email marketing?
The general consensus in the marketing world, based on various statistics and historical feedback and measuring results, suggests that a customer is more likely to invest in a product or service after seeing or hearing a reference to your offering approximately 7 times. This may be across a range of marketing mediums including print advertising, social media, radio advertising, TV advertising, digital advertising and so on.
Emails are a form of direct marketing which over time, most people have become accustomed to receiving after they have subscribed to a mailing list or previously purchased a product that they have a need for or interest in.
Many marketers concur that people are generally more likely to make a purchase directly from receiving an email rather than clicking on an ad. This is not to say that you should not advertise online or by other means, as you still need to raise awareness and reach an audience outside of asking people to commit to your mailing list. But it means that once you have hooked them into hearing about your services, those all-important direct email communications must be presented in the correct way to ensure you can close a sale.
What should my marketing emails look like?
Each company takes a different approach to their communication design depending on what their services and products are, however, there are some main things to incorporate and be mindful of when designing your emails.
Make sure that your emails use a clean, easy to read design and are in line with your brand and use your company colours, logos, tone of voice and style of imagery. Just as with your brand identity, it is important for your communications to be easily identifiable and utilise all the previous brand-building work that you have put into your business so that customers don’t see one version of your company in an email, then another version on your website.
There are various ways to design and send your emails including easy-to-use email marketing specific platforms such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact, DotMailer, for example, and also more custom methods which will require some in-house development and the help of a tech-geek like one of our web developers at Blue Bee. You can also ask our team to code bespoke email templates for you to use on any of the previously mentioned platforms if you want something more specific to your business to help your emails really stand out and keep in line with your brand.
Measuring Your Email Campaign Results
Prior to sending any emails, be sure to plan how you are going to measure the results of your campaign. This way, you can identify what worked and what didn’t, and modify your approach next time around. After all, marketing is often fast-paced and just a subtle change in the language you use could be the difference between getting a sale and not. You could use:
- Reporting features within your chosen email marketing platform
- Google Analytics to see how many referrals came from your email to your website
- Monitoring sales and ensuring that customers are asked where they heard of you or your product or offer and recording the results
- Use a discount code and measure how many people used this code when you exclusively featured it in your email
For help with your email marketing, speak to the experts at Blue Bee who can help with all aspects of email marketing, from designing your templates to writing content, updating your lists, recommending the best platforms for your business and composing and sending emails on your behalf to save you time. Contact us today or give us a call on 01722 775500.