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The importance of email marketing can’t be overstated — it’s one of the best ways to reach your customers and get more eyes on your brand. But if you’ve been struggling with making your email campaigns successful, there is one key thing you might be doing that will sabotage your efforts: making it all about you.
But here’s the good news — shifting your strategy slightly might be all you need to start getting some traction from your email campaigns and deliver higher ROI.
If used effectively and consistently, email marketing is a great tool for both customer acquisition and retention. Eighty percent of small business owners say they rely heavily on their email campaigns for both of these. Email offers you a platform to engage with your audience and keep them interested in your brand, while creating a way to turn your readers into buyers and repeat customers.
Focus on your audience
You might hear the phrase thrown around, “There’s no right or wrong way to market yourself,” but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. To get the best results, your marketing needs to be customer-centric.
It’s all about listening to the needs of your customers and giving them solutions.
Yes, there’s value in sharing our successes. It’s important to keep your customers up-to-date — and excited — about your business, but one of the biggest mistakes to make with your email marketing is to talk about you and your business too much!
Offer a more personal approach when talking about your products and services. Instead of putting your business, what you do, and your backstory in the spotlight, focus more on what you can do for your customers. Start by thinking about what real challenges your customers face and how your products and services provide a solution. When your customer feels heard, and understood, it goes a long way in building trusting, long-term business relationships.
Steps to get you started
To see a positive change in your email marketing outcomes and response rates, we have put together a couple simple steps for you to take.
Step 1: Identify your ideal email marketing audience.
This can provide insight into the pain points your customers are experiencing and how you can address them. Begin by looking at your current customer base and asking yourself these questions:
- Who are my best customers?
- What do they care about?
- What content do they like?
- What social networks do they spend most of their time on?
- What do they value?
- What challenges do they face?
- How are our services addressing a need or solving a problem?
Step 2: Appeal to your customers’ emotions.
When it comes to how we shop, emotions often play a key role in our buying decisions. Form a connection with your customers and prospective clients and show them you care about their needs. Offer a practical solution so they really understand the benefits of working with you.
Through email, create a narrative for them to follow, showing that you actually understand their needs and problems and you can offer a real solution.
Step 3: Restructure your messaging to focus on your audience.
Make them care. Ultimately, your audience just wants one question answered: how are you going to make my life better? Answering this in a tactful and meaningful way will make you stand out in the pool of emails your customers receive daily. By doing so, you will build a relationship and create lifelong customers.
If you’re a small business looking to drive better results from your email marketing campaign, or you feel as though your efforts are falling short of your goals, reach out to us at UpSwell. One of our experts can walk you through our services from email and digital advertising to direct mail.
Our expertise has proven to help thousands of businesses experience growth and gain more loyal customers. You don’t have to sweat the small stuff, we are here to help.
Next, check out our tips for improving your email marketing strategy or these common marketing mistakes for more expert advice.
