how to email customers Archives

Want to know How to Get More Email Subscribers? One of the biggest revenue streams for any online business is repeat customers. Once someone has bought from you, if they are happy, it would seem obvious that they would likely buy from you again. Getting them to subscribe to your email list is a great way to keep customers coming back, but it can also turn people off in fear they are going to be inundated daily with messages from you.

So, here are some tips to get customers to subscribe:

Explain Exactly What They Are Getting. It’s as simple as stating, “We frequently offer one-day sales up to 40% off. If you would like to be notified, please add your email to this list. We promise, no more than one email a week.”
Give Them Options. Better to have them a little, than not at all. For example, “If you would like to be notified when we are having a sale of 30% or more off, please subscribe to our 30%+ list. If you wish to be notified of all sales, please subscribe to our All Sales list.” OneKingsLane.com actually allows you to choose which days of the week and times of the day (AM or PM) that you wish to be notified of any sales. People like having options and being the one in control.
Allow Emails to be Product-Specific. Maybe you sell a variety of products and they are only interested in certain ones. So, offer customers the ability to select certain items that they would like to be notified if they go on sale. This is similar to some services out there which allows you to track your favorite products on any shopping site and be notified when that specific product goes on sale.
Maintain Email Etiquette. You can also offer a feature whereby you will stop sending you emails if they detect that they are going unopened. It is a new form of email etiquette as they are assuming you are away and they do not want to fill up your inbox unnecessarily.

If you are not selling on your own site, but a major marketplace, you can still have customers sign-up for Email Alerts through your Gmail Contacts Group.

FINAL WORD: If you want repeat customer business from your email marketing campaign, you have to be more flexible and scale it to what different customers want and need. People have become leery of email, so give them options and they will be more likely to subscribe. (By the way, did you know you can be alerted by email when I have a new blog post by just clicking on the Follow icon in the right side bar). Related: Email Marketing Tips.

Be sure to see my 96-Page Marketing Planner that has an entire section for Email Marketing.

Need some email marketing tips! I get a lot of promotional emails from stores such as Old Navy, Gap, to name a few. I subscribed to them, so that’s okay. However, I thought I would point out a few tips on how to effectively email your customers, based on what the big companies do that are attention getting (plus a couple of things you shouldn’t do).

6 Email Marketing Tips

1. Free Shipping always gets attention. With gas prices what they are today, it only makes sense to buy something online if you can save money and time driving to the store.

Email-marketing-tips

Little icons get attention. ★’s and even ♥’s do draw the eye to the subject line. For example, ★ 40% OFF TODAY ONLY! ★. But don’t over do it. Too much and it’s annoying. You just want to grab them, you don’t want to blind them.

3. A limited time to act. When the offer says “25% off until 11/09/13” and that is only 2 days away, it gets attention. The customer knows they should probably look at it now if truly interested, otherwise they are going to miss out. Email-marketing-ideas

A significant discount of either 75%, 50%, 40% even 25% will make people act. A 10% or 15% discount doesn’t seem worth the effort.
Don’t add customer’s name in email subject line. A lot of marketing people think this is more personal, but I feel the opposite. I know that when a large company sends out an email and my name is in the header, that they did not personally write each email, but rather just used technology to add my name. This feels more like spam to me than anything. So unless this is an individual email that you physically wrote, do not put the customer’s name in the subject line.
Don’t email too often. There are some companies that send me 2 to 3 promotional emails a day. That’s too intrusive and what will happen is customers will get annoyed and take their name off the email list or just block it as spam. A small business should only email customers either when they have something really special to offer or right before the big holiday shopping season (early November), and no more than twice a month.

FINAL WORD: Email marketing is a very effective way to get sales, so think about what you like and dislike when promotional emails are sent to you, and don’t make the same mistakes with your own customers. Related: How to Get Customers to Join and Stay on Your Email List.

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