One of the best things any business can do is to have a consistent email campaign whereby they are consistently building and nurturing the customer experience.
Many recent studies have shown the power of communicating with the email list at least on a weekly basis. There is even additional studies showing how daily emails can have an even bigger impact on conversions and the overall relationship which directly affects the bottom line.
There are many third party email services that provide an affordable and practical way to manage an email campaign including MailChimp, iContact, Aweber, as well as the more inclusive marketing platforms such as HubSpot and InfusionSoft. However, the one thing that will not be provided with any service is the content for all those emails.
In order for your emails to be be well received, you’ll need some preplanning and strategic thinking. As we mentioned above, it will be necessary to send out at least one email per week. That means creating a total of 52 emails per year. In order to keep the audience interested and not opting out, the content must be both relevant and have value for your customers. So, let’s take a look at how any business can find the content that will wow their readers.
The first step is understanding that this process needs to be preplanned and can’t be done on the fly. One way to begin the process is by sitting down with a calendar and laying out the topics for each week and the year as a whole. Begin by noting all the traditional holidays and develop a message for those dates. Many times a business can incorporate a holiday message along with a special or event the business is having on that holiday (i.e. President’s Day sales).
Check out your social media channels
Another great place to find content that is relevant and valuable is to look at the comments and questions being posed to any social media pages your business may have. Take notice of what is being shared and commented on by visitors to your social media pages. Notice what specific updates or shares are getting the most likes, tweets, and pins. Then, put these topic into an email message for that week.
Similarly, you could create an email profiling the photos that customers have been posting. Properly done, this makes your audience feel part of your brand as it is highlighting them.
Your Employees Are A Great Resource
Your front line and customer service employees can be an invaluable source for content that is often overlooked. Regularly survey your customer service representatives to determine what are the most common asked questions and use them in as part of your emails to educate new customers.
Also, obtain stories that highlight a unique solution your product/service provided for one of your customers, or how your product/service made a big difference to one of your customers’ business or life. These stories can then be featured case studies in your emails.
Study Your Target Market
The key to being able to write to any group is fully understanding who they are and what is important to them. Therefore, learn as much as possible about your audience.
Begin by setting up listening stations with such services as TweetGrid. Become an expert on your topic and become a curator for your audience whereby they check with you first to learn what is new in your specialty. You can do this by subscribing to Buzzfeed and Google Alerts, as well as your industry publications and trade journals.
Then provide the best information on your blog and have an email that highlights the topic while encouraging them to visit your blog site.
Along the same lines you can produce Podcasts or have well known guest writers featured on your blog site. Your email would again introduce the audience to the content and refer them to your site for the complete information.
Finally, review online forums, groups and join networking organizations. Pay close attention to common problems and concerns being mentioned. Notice any newbie questions that are being posed and use those in your introductory emails. Many times you will notice that the toughest problems people have are being ignored. Try to develop an answer to those questions and featured them in your emails.
Be Careful of “Me Too”
It is important that your emails – and for that matter any content that you provide – be as unique as possible. For this reason take the time to review your competition’s website and ensure that your information is not simply the same content everyone else is offering.
As you have seen, there are several ways content for an email campaign can be gathered and arranged to bring value to your audience. When an email campaign is done correctly, your list of potential customers and clients will increase and this will have a direct impact to the bottom line.
At the Bay Area Mastermind we provide our members with the tools and strategies to help their business grow and prosper. Each meeting features a cutting edge strategy or technique that is specifically suited for the needs of our members. Step by step instructions are provided and each member has online support between meetings for help when implementing. You are cordially invited to Test Drive a meeting today!