6 ways you’re using email marketing without realising it

Since it started to gain popularity with marketers in 1990, email marketing has established itself as the most effective form of marketing with the best return on investment. It has been used for decades to convince new customers to buy, to convince existing customers to buy again, and to grow businesses of all shapes and sizes.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing isn’t just those spam emails you delete from your inbox every morning, or the notification you get telling you your phone bill is due. It’s all the ways you keep in touch with your current customers, potential customers, and previous customers. Perhaps you think email marketing is a load of nonsense and you’ve made it this far without. Well, we’ve got some news for you…you’re probably already using it – you just don’t realise it yet.

If you do any of the following to keep in touch with your customers, you’re marketing with email.

• Sending appointment reminders
• Sending contract renewals
• Providing quotes
• Sending newsletters
• Sending out surveys
• Promotional emails

Sound familiar? Now that we’ve established you are using email marketing, we’ll help you use it consciously to achieve your business goals.

Build customer loyalty with email marketing

Loyal, or returning customers can provide up to 80% of a company’s revenue and often spend 67% more on products and services compared new customers. Using email marketing, you can turn new customers into repeat customers time after time.

Here’s how:

Keep customers informed & share important information

You provided a great service and the customer was happy, so why haven’t they bought from you again? Often customers don’t return simply because they’ve forgotten about your business.

Email marketing is a great way to entice previous customers back to your business. Share new products, services, and exciting information to remind them why they chose to buy from you in the first place. Finally reopening after coronavirus? -Tell your customers! Launching a new product or service? – tell your customers! If you don’t tell them, who will?

Equally, if you have made changes to your business such as different opening hours, price changes, or anything else an email is the easiest, and most cost-effective way to get the message out. Remind them you are still here, open for business, and with big plans for the future.

 

Ask your customers for their opinions

We all like to feel heard and valued, and your customers are no different. Without customers your business wouldn’t be very profitable, so their opinions are pretty important.

Use email marketing to send out surveys and find out what your customers really think of your business. Did they find your website easy to use? What did they think of the product or service? Is there anything that could have made their experience better? Asking these questions will help you to refine your business and optimise it for customer satisfaction.

 

Send event and appointment reminders

Email marketing is perfect for reminding your customers when they have appointments with you, or when they have an event to attend. With many people using email apps on their smartphones, a well-timed reminder can be the difference between a customer attending your event or forgetting about it entirely.

 

Send follow ups

Once a customer has interacted with your business- either by buying from you, making an enquiry, or any other action, it’s always good to follow up. Checking in with your customers shows that you value their business and gives you the opportunity to cross-sell other relevant products or services. It also gives them a space to voice any concerns or problems they’ve encountered – giving you time to react and rectify the potential issues.

Now that we’ve looked at ways to use email marketing to achieve your business goals, let’s turn our attention to the practicalities. The best way to effectively market with email is to use a platform that can automate it for you.

Using Act CRM Cloud to automate email marketing

Act CRM cloud with marketing automation gives you the tools you need to market like a professional. With marketing-to-CRM workflows, Act CRM cloud makes it easy to build on your results by automatically scheduling calls or follow ups.

For advice on getting started with email marketing and Act CRM in drop us an email on info@softext.co.uk or give us a call on 0121 323 2304.