Archives for 2021

Using market segmentation like a marketer

With a little imagination, it’s easy to picture Great Greens’ ideal client, and similar profiles can be constructed for any type of client. The information above provides clear guidelines for gathering leads based on home type (detached, with a lawn) and proximity to Great Greens. This ideal client also has relatively high income, so a good marketer would tell you it makes sense to focus on neighborhoods with a high median home price. Median home prices are a matter of public record and easy to obtain on websites like Trulia and Zillow.

A broad email marketing campaign, targeting high-income homeowners with lawns in your area, is a good way to begin your advertising. You have three options here:

• Purchase email addresses for people in the areas you’ve identified.
• Do research online, starting with physical addresses and names, and working your way back to email addresses – which is time-consuming and requires some digging skills.
• Consider a well-placed local advertisement or snail mail marketing campaign, since physical addresses are easier to find.

How to write marketing emails that get results

An email is an opportunity to connect; however, if you are going to do the copywriting yourself, apply best practices.

1. Craft a great subject line.

Emails with attention-catching subject lines are more likely to be opened. The key is to keep your subject line short and to the point. Consider what your customers want to hear from you, not vice versa.

If you’re writing a subject line to notify potential customers of a sale, for example, focus on the sale itself. There is a tendency among amateur writers to overwrite, but subject lines are short by design.

Remember that most of your potential customers will read the subject line and nothing else. If you only have one sentence to make your sale, what do you want to say in that sentence to increase brand awareness? Always focus on what you can do for the patron, not how you want your brand to be perceived. You can convey your brand identity in other ways, like through word choice and design.

2. Be focused and clear

Focus is on the top of the list when building a successful email marketing strategy. Each email you send should have only one purpose; don’t try to make your customers aware of every service and every promotion you offer in one email.

If you have a lot of information to convey or your services are complex, consider doing a full email series, with targeted emails presenting different topics. Plan your topics from initial customer introduction of your products or services through the sales process to purchase. A newsletter with educational content on your products or services is an additional option business with a complicated customer sales process. Either choice you decide on, use an organized process when executing.

Ideally, targeted emails should be brief and to the point, similar to cover letters for job applications. What are you offering or showcasing, why is it better than the competition, and how can the customer get it? Don’t get so caught up in gimmicky taglines that you forget vital information like where your business is located, links to your website, or your hours of operation.

If you are not a natural writer, you might begin the process by writing in simple terms and adding finesse later. This can be helpful for clarifying which information is important and establishing the right order in which to present it.

Using the local swimwear line example, you could start out with something like this:

• Our swimwear is a luxury product. Our brand is Swim Elite. Our swimwear is locally designed and handcrafted. We are having a 50% off sale. The sale lasts through August. You can order items on our website link listed here. People should order soon, while they can.

That’s not much of a sales pitch, but it illuminates the important information. For example, the mention of the 50% sale should happen earlier, since that is the main purpose of the email. Plus, customers need to know the product is both high-end and local, and you want to promote the name of the brand.

Once you’ve covered the basic information, you can now brighten the message. These are some examples:

• Swim Elite is offering 50% off our luxury swimwear line! Our sale on locally designed swimwear only lasts through August. Order now!
• Swim Elite’s luxury swimwear line is now 50% off through August. Order our locally designed swimwear while the offer lasts!

3. Include a CTA.

One of the most common mistakes novices writing targeted emails make is not including a call to action (CTA). The CTA is a core of copywriting and exactly what it sounds like: a call for the reader to do something.

Keep your CTA short and clear. If you can’t figure out what your CTA should be, it may indicate that your marketing strategy is unclear. Without a clear goal, it’s impossible to create a successful marketing campaign. 

These are some examples of CTAs:

• Order now!
• Register for this event today.
• Request a price quote now!

4. Focus on engagement.

Higher engagement should be a priority of a short-term goal of your sales process. You can achieve engagement by directing your readers to additional content, your blog posts,  social media accounts, and educational content within the campaign itself, to help move prospects down your sales funnel. Your language concentrate on brand’s message and provide expertise in your industry that your competitors aren’t offering.

These are ways you should engage your audience:

• Add links to subscribe to your newsletter.
• Include the option to follow your social media pages.
• Include links to your blog page
• Include thought-leadership content in your emails.

5. Personalize the emails.

Personalized emails tend to perform better than generic email blasts. Personalization entails more than inserting the recipient’s name in the subject line, though. These are a couple of ways to create personalized emails:

• Send targeted email campaigns based on a group’s interests, needs or demographics.
• Follow up on any replies you receive.
• Look into technology that can help analysis the potential data generated by your email campaigns.

6. Don’t spam your email lists.

Don’t flood your clients with too many emails, or they will end up in the spam box. It is more efficient to limit your emails to important notifications. Use the format to advertise special events, sales or new product offerings.

7. Watch your language.

The type of language used in your marketing email influences the response to your campaigns. For instance, write in the second person to give a personalized feel, and use actionable language to increase response rates. Phrases such as “brand new,” “limited time,” “today only,” and “last chance” can create a sense of urgency for readers to open your email and follow your CTA.

8. Test your copy first.

An expert marketer knows that all email advertisements need fine-tuning before their release. Use A/B testing to get the best responses from your campaigns and test each feature separately – including the subject line, body and CTA.

9. Keep your email lists up to date.

Maintaining your email distribution lists is worth the time and effort. Make sure addresses are inputted correctly and updated as needed. Although you want to attract new subscribers, you also want to make sure current subscribers receive your mailings.

Choosing images for marketing emails

The text in your emails is only part of the marketing puzzle. Ensure the images are not violating any copyright laws, are of high quality, add to the overall message and identity of the brand, and look good on mobile devices, laptops, and desktops.

Email marketing automation 101

Once you’ve established a marketing strategy and your campaign is ready to be initiated you should consider using marketing automation software to modernize your future email campaigns to collect data to fine tune your ongoing and future campaigns.  Email templates, including design templates, are a staple of many SaaS marketing products. Another useful feature is the option to schedule emails, customize them with customer names, track deliverability and open rates, track click-through rates, and automatically send trigger emails. Mailchimp and Constant Contact are popular marketing automation products, but there are dozens of others.

Some email marketing automation tools are also linked to larger popular CRM systems (like in the case of HubSpot, which offers a free trial,  and Salesforce), which can help your sales staff track the customer journey through your sales pipeline.  

Tip: If your company already uses a dedicated CRM, see if it offers any add-on tools to streamline your email marketing.

Source: Business.com