Email is one of the easiest ways for businesses to keep in touch with customers, nurture leads and promote products and services.
Effective email marketing can form a rapport with prospects and keep your company top of mind for when they are ready to start a building or remodeling project, or help leverage your existing customer base to take advantage of other services you offer. Email marketing also allows you to engage with current customers, offer promotions or solicit reviews or referrals.
Email is an easy and inexpensive way to communicate with your customers and prospects. Utilizing email marketing best practices can help you make connections, build relationships and grow your business.
The Importance of Email Marketing – Why It Matters
One of the advantages of email marketing is that it puts you in front of many current and potential customers at once. Research has shown email to be an effective and efficient tool in trying to attract new customers. Ninety-four percent of Internet users have email accounts, and 75 percent say they prefer email over other marketing methods.
What Are The Benefits of Email Marketing?
With email marketing, you are already one step ahead because people have already shown an interest in what you have to offer by providing you with their email address. Email offers you:
• Visibility: A marketing email is six times more likely than a tweet to prompt a consumer to click through to your website. Customers are more likely to see an email than a social media post, partly because only 61 percent of Internet users have social media accounts, but also because you own your email list and are not at the mercy of algorithm-controlled social media feeds.
• Customization: You can personalize your messages and segment your email list by various demographics such as age, location and previous engagement with your business.
• High Return on Investment (ROI): Since you do not have to pay for advertising and your email list is already targeted to your ideal customer base, the cost for email marketing is very low for what you stand to gain in return.
How Does Email Marketing Work?
Email marketing is a versatile way to keep your business in front of current and new customers, but there are some best practices to keep in mind to maximize the benefits:
• It’s all about the customer. Focus on what your customers need rather than pushing for a sale. Encourage subscribers to add you to their address books so your emails stay out of spam folders, and make it easy for people to unsubscribe if their needs have changed.
• Set an outreach schedule. Reach out to potential customers at least once a month, but be careful not to over-email them – no more than once a week. Also, consider the best time of day to send your messages. Before and after work, and during lunch are common times people check email.
• Provide good content. Make sure your content is clear, written in a professional but conversational tone and includes relevant photos or videos. Improve your open rate by crafting an interesting and catchy subject line that highlights the valuable content included in the email.
How To Do Email Marketing
Target your messaging, make sure your copy doesn’t sound like spam and design your emails to read like you’re writing to one very special customer.
• How to build an email list: Start by including a registration form on your website, and also add potential customers you meet in the community. Social media is a great way to capture emails by offering a discount or unique content for signing up. Be wary when purchasing email lists, as you want to target people who are specifically interested in your company.
• How to retarget prospects: Create a prospect list by removing your current customers and send a remarketing email to prospects that didn’t result in a sale. Include an offer or discount for signing a contract by a specific date. Be sure to include firm time limits on the offer to avoid confusion.
• How to retarget customers: If your business offers more than one service, such as roofing, windows, siding or additions/major remodels, send an email to your previous customers letting them know you can provide these services, too.
• How to optimize your emails: Start with a good subject line, and stick to one theme per email. More than half of emails are opened on mobile devices, so make sure your emails are mobile friendly.
• How to track your results: Email marketing software makes it easy to find out who is actually reading your emails by analyzing deliverability, open rate, click-through rate and conversions, which is the number of readers who become customers. Use these analytics to test different tactics and see what resonates best with your audience.
Email marketing is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to share your message with a large audience. It can help you cultivate relationships, reward customer loyalty and keep all prospective and current customers engaged.