Love & Hate: Email Marketing (It's Important!)
Ah, what a controversial topic. Should you do email marketing or not?
My answer is YES!
As much as we all hate those spam emails that seem to be never-ending sales tactics, we still want to have an email marketing strategy within our own companies. I am not saying a SPAM-worthy email marketing strategy… think more strategically, not just throw stuff out there on a whim.
Some of you may be wondering, what is email marketing? The definition, according to Google, is this:
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations.
Speaking for myself, when I see that I got an email with a special promo code for a makeup product that I adore or my favorite clothing store, I get really excited, and want to immediately head for the checkout! However, these would be small items that are normally about $30-$100… not thousands of dollars like Staging, Design, or Investing. This is why having a clear message and a clear email marketing strategy is very important.
If you've ever heard of the word “funnel” in sales, you’ll know what I mean, and if not, I am going to explain it. Think of a funnel, you have a big opening on top and then a tiny one at the bottom. This is like your leads in a sense. When you have a big group of people that you are marketing to, let’s just say the whole DFW area, you will only have a few people that actually come out at the end of that funnel. Those are the people that are serious about your services. You are going to send them out to a mass amount of people, but only a few will come back with a response.
The difference between spam email and email marketing is it has a lot to do with the relevance of the topic, how personal you are, and not being "salesy". A lot of the time when someone hears email marketing, they think that everything has to have a product behind it. This is not the case, especially when it comes to email marketing to a client.
The next time you meet with your marketing team to discuss your strategy concerning email reach out, be sure to bring this up.
✨ Final Tip: Before sending out an email campaign to everyone in your database, make sure you segment them out. Some clients have used you before; place them in their own segment. Some have just been interested in your design work - make them a segment. There will be general emails that will go out to everyone in your database, but you don’t want to send the wrong email type out if you work with different clientele.
Remember that email marketing is about relationship building. Think of the acronym ESR (just made that up)...Education. Sales. Relationships. Be sure to come up with the best strategy while incorporating all 3!
I hope you were able to take some nuggets away from this!
-Jill Johnson