Existing customers can be an ongoing source of profitable sales. If you’ve met your service promise and given them value, email marketing to existing customers can help make tough economic times a bit brighter—if you remember that permission based email is a relationship built on trust and expectations. Permission based email implies a promise. By sending only relevant, timely, personalized, valuable messages based on customer preferences you’ll have a much longer and profitable relationship.
Make a good first impression with a well crafted welcome message. Email marketers consistently discover that interest fades quickly. A strong welcome message reminds the customer of the reason he or she signed up to receive your communications in the first place. It also re-enforces your brand name recognition. The “From” line is a critical factor a customer considers when determining whether to open or delete and email. By seeing your name as soon as possible after signing up, they are apt to quickly recognize it again in the “From” line of your next message. This is also a perfect opportunity to recap what the subscriber can expect from you. If you deliver on this promise you’re apt to keep the subscriber engaged.
A lot of clients ask us if there is a “best time and day” to send emails. The answer is yes, but it is different for each subscriber. Tuesday morning is an often repeated suggestion but beware of blanket recommendations. We like to examine open dates and times of earlier messages to find patterns that are specific to our clients’ subscriber preferences. Whenever possible segmenting sends based on historical preferred open dates and times can result in a substantial lift in response rates.
List fatigue is a common problem. After a while customers stop responding to your promotions, Many don’t unsubscribe. So what is going on? Some are lurkers, waiting for aggressive promotions. Others just delete your message without opening them, often in a mass delete during inbox cleanups. You can re-engage these passive subscribers. We’ve had great success by segmenting these non-responders and surveying them to find out what’s changed. Are their needs different? Have they changed jobs? Moved? Those that respond often become re-engaged and turn out to be one of your more profitable segments.
Reaching out to non-responsive subscribers is also a great way to keep you list clean. Besides keeping delivery costs down you’ll get more accurate data by eliminating passive list clutter that can skew important metrics.
Remember to be persistent in building your email list. By replenishing your list with new subscribers, you’ll maintain a source of repeat business that can help get you through economic times like these.
Before moving to Western MA, Dan launched his career in New York in advertising and public relations, where he worked with some of the country’s top brands. Dan also has many years’ experience in small-business and corporate marketing, finance, franchise business operations and field consulting. In 2005, Dan became the first area president of TruePresence, a national internet marketing firm specializing in web design and search engine marketing. Dan’s clients have included Johnson & Johnson, Sears, Warner-Lambert, Monsanto and Pepsi, but he prefers the individuality of his smaller business clients. Dan launched The Green Internet Group to help business owners fully leverage the digital marketing and social media by offering results driven marketing planning, consulting, training and creative services.
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