Last week on the blog, we talked about permission-based marketing and ways to ask prospects and customers to opt-in to your marketing communications. Asking for permission is imperative to build credibility and trust with your prospects, and also necessary in order to remain compliant with CAN-SPAM laws. As we discussed last week, you can ask your customers and prospects to opt-in to marketing communications through an email campaign or through other channels such as web or social media advertisements.
As a small business owner, though, email marketing should be a priority for you. Remember, your email list is quite possibly your business’ most valuable asset when it comes to marketing. It’s a direct line to your customer, and it’s not borrowed; it’s something you own. That said, there are many other types of campaigns you’ll want to consider once you launch your business. Today, we’re covering the top fiveemail marketing campaigns you should be running if you aren’t already.
Here they are:
Welcome Email
Welcome emails are usually the first opportunity you have to introduce your brand, so, of course you want to do it right and make a good impression. The great thing about welcome emails is that they don’t have to be fancy and can be easily automated after you gain a new subscriber. In fact, web providers like Squarespace automate this process for users so all you have to do is enter your logo and a little bit of text.
What makes a welcome email click-worthy? This touchpoint is an opportunity to talk about what makes your brand unique and the value your customers are going to get from subscribing to your communications. It’s also an opportunity to offer a “thank you” for subscribing. You can do so by offering a promotion or coupon code for your customer’s first purchase. Don’t forget to add social sharing buttons to your welcome email so your customers know where to find you on social media and can share with others who may be interested in your business.
Newsletters
Newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with your customers and nurture them without being overly promotional. Your newsletter could be a quick, interesting summary of what your business has been up to over the course of the month, events you may be attending, or interesting content like blog posts or articles you’d like to share.
You can also use your newsletter as an opportunity to giveaway something in exchange for additional demographic information from your customer. While the best newsletters aren’t overly promotional, don’t forget that they are still an opportunity to either announce a new product, promotion, or event that may be going on.
Connect Via Social
There's no doubt social media is critical to your business and if you aren’t using it to connect with your customers, you’re losing out on huge opportunities. You need to make sure you’re able to reach your customers through every possible channel or platform you belong to and one way you can do this is through a connect via social campaign.
The connect via social campaign is a newer type of email campaign that crosses channels from email into social media and potentially back again to email. It’s an email marketing campaign that seeks to engage people in their newsfeed. You have plenty of options with this one - from Facebook to Instagram, you can simply ask your subscribers to connect with you. Or, you can encourage engagement through a contest or promotion.
Below is a cool way that Fruit of the Loom connects with their customers over email and through social media, prompting customers to connect so they can have quicker access to company news.
You can take it a step further and ask users to pin pictures of a specific product of yours that they purchased to Pinterest, post them on Facebook, or tweet with a hashtag. The possibilities are really endless here.
Promotional Campaign
Promotional campaigns are the most common types of email marketing campaign and essential for your business because they equate to sales. Holidays are the best time to run promotions; every business does it and everyone expects it. Most people are inundated with marketing emails during a holiday – no matter how big or small it is. Because of this, you want to stand out from the crowd. One way you can do so is by making your campaign brief and simple like Headspace does below.
Other great things about this promotional email:
· It's easy to read and skim
· The design is clean and easy on the eyes
· Call to action is clear and in the right place, using a button
Reengagement
Chances are if you’ve already run all of these campaigns, there is a large number of subscribers that hasn't engaged in your communications. Whether it’s because you have a list of bad email addresses from your customers and prospects, or they simply weren’t interested in what you have to say, you should conduct a re-engagement campaign about twice a year and see where they are in your pipeline.
Take a look at your subscriber list. If there’s someone who hasn’t opened an email in six months, you want to reach out to them separately and either re-engage them or determine that they are no longer interested and clean your list. By not opening or engaging with your emails, they can potentially affect your reputation in the eyes of the ISPs, and therefore your deliverability rate.
Of course, this is only a very brief list of email campaigns you should be running. Larger companies may conduct two or three times this this amount due to their customer base and sales goals. But for startups, four or five different types of campaigns is more than enough to keep your customers engaged. After all, this is only one channel you’ll be marketing from.
What do you think? Are there any other must-have email campaigns that startups should be using? If so, leave a comment below!