3 Ways to Make Your Email Marketing More Effective (And Your Clients Happy)
Email marketing has a number of powerful benefits. It’s fast and has high ROI due to the low (or almost zero) cost of sending it, it’s easy to segment your database, and the relationship you have with your clients is a two way relationship.
Yet, with all of these benefits, there are some new issues you’ll need to think about, if you want your email marketing activity to be more than a source of spam complaints.
What are these issues?
#1 – How much of your email permissions are actually ‘permission based’?
If the only permissions you’re asking for are first name and email address then it probably is. This is a huge issue as the majority of people will never give a business owner their permission to email them, and the recipient of such a request will not only delete the message, but file a spam complaint against the sender, working to make sure you never send it again.
In order to fix this issue, you should have a more comprehensive permission based list. Create a list of all actions you want your recipients to take (this could be an online purchase, signing up to receive a newsletter, filling out a survey, or downloading a special report), and give them a choice ( -> more info / action here) to accept it or not.
Depending on your type of business, the permission based options may be more or less effective than the default permission based options.
Another way to avoid an excessive amount of spam complaints (if you don’t want them in the first place) is by changing the frequency of your communications. Run a congruent frequency of 4-8 times a month during which you send email. Every 3rd email should be content related for example, and every 4th email should be more sales/promotional related.
If your emails are content related, your recipients ‘ Accept’ the frequency of your emails, and your chances of receiving less spam complaints goes down.
#2 – Track what you’re sending
One of the biggest advantages of using email to market your home improvement company and as your primary form of communication is how easily you can track it. All of the main email service providers, such as Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail, offer tracking segments of your subscribers’ database. By collecting this data, you can get a feel for which messages send the most successful Open Rates and Click Throughs, as well as which emails get the highest unsubscribe rates. This information will inform you as to what content is the most valuable, and therefore ensure that you don’t send poor content and more spam complaints.
#3 – Send out with a sense of accountability
Only send your message when you have something REALLY valuable to say, and you will not be afraid to ask for the Clients’ Dollars. It feels great to be asked.
By creating a plan of action that says at a minimum, “what will I send my clients today besides articles about my product?”, and sending just that consistently helps build the relationship you and your product have with your clients.
tracked properly, you can see which emails get the highest open rate and most clicks. Knowing what kind of content you are sending your clients and the frequency you are sending it helps you in ways that email marketing has not been able to serve up in the past. Once you get the feel for this, you’ll discover that you can typical deliver better, and eventually experience lower spam complaints, more Open Rates and more Click Throughs.
