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Below are the notes:
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One of the activities that can build and strengthen the relationship with the customers is sending newsletters and special offers to them via email. We can call this activity as email marketing.
By conducting email marketing you can stay top-of-mind with your customers.
Email marketing is one of online marketing. Many companies perform this to build customer loyalty and increase an engagement.
The fundamental goal of email marketing: growing your customer relationship and converting new prospects.
Email marketing step
– Set goals.
Example: Use email to display your product or to explain your service, use email to drive traffics to your website, use email to deliver a promotion or coupon code to increase the sales, etc.
– Develop email list.
Build a list of people who interest to your business, ask them their email.
The example way to get their email:
a. When customer buy your product, offer him to discount and special offer if he gives his email.
b. Put the form and encourage the visitor to subscribe via the form.
– Nurture the customer.
Send them an “hello” or introduction email. Then after a while, send the information about your business, afterward ask them about the thing their need and want, etc.
The thing that must remember is do not overwhelm your list with too much content and send them email too often.
– Group the people based on the same interest.
Once you group them, send them information or content they might find interesting. In addition to this, you can send them specific offers that are related to their interest.
– Ask them feedback.
For example: about their shopping, customer-support experience, about the price, etc.
Notes:
– Email marketing doesn't let customers contact each other over email. If you want to do this, create mailing-list groups, so the member of groups can contact each other.
– Customers can not reply directly to your email marketing because it is often sent from “no reply” address. If you you want to directly talk so customers can reply, ask the queries or problem, provide them dedicated customer service email address.
Using email marketing services
If you want to conduct email marketing, you must utilize an email marketing services.
Most common email marketing services features:
– There is contact database.
This must be there to store your customer's information.
Example information: name, email address, etc.
If you have had a list, you can upload the data to the email marketing service database.
– Has ability to subscribe/unsubscribe.
People free to choose whether he subscribe or unsubscribe our email marketing program.
Email marketing service must provide an easy way for recipients to opt out your newsletter.
Usually most email service provides special code to put in your website, so you can encourage visitor to subscribe via form in the website. Once visitor clicked subscribe button, the system automatically transfer this data to contact database in the email marketing service server.
– Has ability to group people based on their need and interest.
– Has a template email.
You can create and modify this template based on your need.
– Has a preview your email before sending.
Make sure the email marketing service mobile-friendly and match with different devices.
– Has ability to submit now and schedule when the email goes out.
– An email marketing tool must have track system.
This is important to track people whether the people read your email or not, when the receive it, when they open your email, whether they click your link or not, whether they purchase the stuff or not, etc.
– Has an analytics tools.
By this tool you can track and measure your email marketing campaign.
So, you can learn customer behavior in order to deliver the content more personalized and more relevant in the right time.
– Has a personalization feature.
So, you can deliver relevant content based on person's interest or group's interest.
Notes:
Some email marketing service are free (for limited contact database), and charge.
Creating great marketing email
Now, it's time to creating an email to your contact list and ready to grab your list attention.
How to grab your customer/list attention? You can grab them by writing strong subject, concise and relevant content, and offering links for more information.
Why you must have strong and appealing subject? because the first thing you must do is to get them to open the email. Subject of the email is first impression factor. Try hard to write the most valuable and relevant information contained in the body of email. Once more, keep the subject more personalize or localize.
Make sure the from field of your email clearly identifies your business (your name and email address). People are more likely to open an email from someone who has clear identity.
Now, we go to the main body of email (email content). In this part, keep in mind that you must write your content concise and get right to the point. Keep them focused on a single idea.
If you want to deliver a long information, you can add a link to see a longer article in the website or watch the information video.
The main point in the email content is calls-to-action. Make sure you have calls to action (link, button, etc). Then encourage the reader to click it.
Managing the email marketing campaign
Step to improve email marketing campaign:
– Testing your email.
Conduct split testing or A/B testing.
– Creating relevant landing pages.
– Measuring the email marketing campaign.
What is A/B testing?
A/B testing is when you create more than one version of email and track which one performs the best.
Example of A/B testing:
When you test a subject of your email. You can send half of your list version A, and send version B to another half. Then track and look which version has a higher open rate.
Once you done with A/B testing, now let's concentrate to landing page. Landing page is the first page the visitors see when they arrive at your site after they click the URL in your email.
I remind you that your list will read your email on desktop, mobile, tablet, notebook, etc. So, both your email content and your landing page must work well accross all the devices.
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Previous lesson :
http://marketingforbeginner.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-online-opportunities-online-marketing-course-1.html
The related email marketing article might be useful for you:
1. Building list through Facebook Fan Page
2. Email marketing tips
3. Email marketing tactics based on experiences
