Email campaigns are an important step in the sales funnel. They’re a relatively affordable way to stay in contact with loyal customers and reach out to prospective new ones you may have met at sales events. Email campaigns can also be targeted, which allows you to tailor your messages based on customer actions and send out the most relevant content at the best time. But to get the most out of email campaigns, your sales team needs to understand how to use this tool effectively. In this guide, we’ll go over five key email campaign ideas to help you improve your marketing effectiveness and drive sales.
Attract New Customers With Promotional Offers
From local fairs to trade shows, there are countless times when you have the opportunity to collect contact information from potential customers. What you do with that information once you have it spells the difference between successful business events that convert new customers and events that were a waste of time.
Sending emails that offer coupons and other promotions to interested parties is a good way to get customers’ toes in the door. It allows them to try your product at a fraction of the normal cost. If they like it, you can create customer loyalty and repeat business in this manner.
Improve Marketing Effectiveness With Quality Content
One of the best email campaign ideas is to offer value to your customers through quality content.
What does this mean? Consider who your target audience is and what problems you want to help them address. Then, send emails with quality information on related topics.
Consider a company that sells reusable notebooks. Its target audience includes people who like to take notes by hand but also care about the environment or don’t want to buy new notebooks every couple of weeks — possibly millennials or even Gen Xers. This company could send out content about:
- Ways to help the environment
- Environmental causes worth supporting
- Tips for saving money in college
These types of content-driven emails provide tangible value to customers. As a result, your customers will start to see you as an expert in your area. When they receive emails that are relevant to them, they begin to feel like you understand their problems and concerns, and they believe you’re the right brand to solve those problems.
Increase Your Email Clicks With Pre-Approval Notifications
While many of your emails should be content-based, a portion should also be promotional, giving your customers a way to use their new brand loyalty.
Pre-approval notifications are one way you can convert people from “curious potential customers” to paying customers.
Consider those customers who may have looked at your website and shown interest in your products, but have been turned away by sticker shock. Maybe the price of your items isn’t what they expected, or maybe it’s just outside their current range.
The last thing you want is for these customers to decide your product is too elite for them and move on. Instead, you can send a notice of financing pre-approval to customers who have been browsing your inventory or who have added items to their cart but haven’t purchased.
While many companies are offering pre-approved financing, Skeps’ instant financing allows merchants to give more purchasing power to their customers and enhance their shopping experience like never before. Pre-approved financing gives customers a way to pay for products that may otherwise have been outside their price points. Pre-approved financing is one of the email campaign ideas that lets them know that you have an avenue to help them finance their project — an option that will help up to 76% of customers make a purchase.
Increase Repeat Purchases With Limited-Time Offers
Limited-time offers are a great way to drive sales during a specific period of time. The key is to know how to use these offers.
Give a Clear Time Frame
Customers are so used to seeing words like “Act Now” or “For a Short Time Only” that they have learned to tune them out. You want to give specific dates delineating when your offer is good for. This gives customers the drive to look at your offer instead of telling themselves they’ll get to it later.
Feature Something Specific
There’s a time and place for putting your entire product catalog on sale (Black Friday, for example). But limited-time offer email campaigns can also be a great way to feature newly launched products or promote a product that’s been getting overlooked. Featuring something specific also prevents customers from dealing with choice paralysis: They know exactly what your offer is good for and can simply decide they want that product or they don’t.
If you’re not going to feature a specific item, be very clear about which items in your store are on sale. It can be frustrating for customers to feel like everything is on sale except the item they happened to pick. Avoid that by making it crystal clear what your sale is good for.
Consider Using a Coupon Code
Instead of making certain products on sale for everyone who visits your store, consider using a coupon code and making those offers exclusive to people who opt in to your emails. This gives loyal customers a reason to continue opening your sales emails: They know they’re the first to receive promotions, ahead of your other customers.
If all sales are just available on your website, on the other hand, it’s easy for your email subscribers to begin ignoring the messages you send.
Drive Customer Loyalty With Reward and Referral Programs
Once you have customers and they’ve bought a few items, you can use reward and referral programs to keep them coming back.
Reward programs simply reward customers who have spent a certain amount of money or purchased a certain number of items.
Referral programs offer a discount to customers who refer a friend or family member to your company — but only if that referral leads to a sale. It can be a great way to get people talking about your brand.
Get Value From Your Email Marketing Campaigns
These are a few email campaign ideas that can be a great way to boost sales and improve relationships with your customers. We can help! Skeps offers a tool you can use to create pre-approval offers for your customers. Contact us today to learn more.
