When Christian entrepreneurs understand the power of email marketing, they have a tool that will help grow their business on autopilot.
Technically anytime you communicate via email with customers, you are email marketing. However, I want you to think more strategically than that and make email marketing a powerful tool for your business.
Every business thrives on regular repeat customers and email marketing is a great way to engage with customers. Communicating regularly keeps your brand at the ‘top’ of their mind. Ultimately, you want your customers to think of your business first when they think of your industry.
You may have been at a register and the cashier asked for your email. If you give them your email, they will send you special, coupons and interesting information about their business. If it is a restaurant, they may send weekly specials, chef suggestions or cooking tips. What is offered is dependent on the business type and interest level of the audience.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is simply collecting emails from current and/or potential customers in order to develop a relationship with them. It is a strategic communication tool that enhances your brand and sets up your authority as a leader in your industry.
- Let me give you the basic 1-2-3 sequence of most email marketing systems.
- A customer comes to your site and is offered an incentive to give their name and email on a form.
- That email is collected and the incentive is delivered.
A sequence is initiated (automatically or through a sales process) delivering valuable content to your customer as a follow up strategy.
How can I use email marketing in my business?
The key to success with email marketing is to focus on strategy. What is your goal in collecting emails? Are you building relationships with potential customers, getting potential customers to buy, getting current customers to buy more, or what? You must have a single strategy for every email sequence in order to be effective.
The next step in using email marketing is to understand your customers and their needs. Most businesses will use some sort of incentive to entice the customer to give up their email. What real or perceived needs do your customers have that you can solve for free and can be delivered digitally?
Digital offerings can include things like cheat sheets, resource lists, best of reports, infographics, etc. It needs to sound exciting and offer an immediate benefit to your potential customer. Use the words that your customers would naturally use and make sure the title is catchy enough to build curiosity.
Once you have identified or created a helpful resource, you want to implement a form on your webpage to collect the email and deliver the resource. You can also collect emails by having cashiers or phone center workers enter the information given by the customer or go ‘old school’ and have a clip board where customers can write their email and name.
For example, a hair salon may collect email addresses with the promise of delivering hair care tips each week or highlight the newest trends of hairstyles each month in a digital newsletter. The emails are professional and engaging while delivering valuable information as promised. You want to offer value more than asking customers to buy more. Remember, you are building a relationship. When you offer valuable information, they will take notice and will buy when they are ready to use your services again.
Incentives do not need to be digital, but doing so means you can distribute as many as you want with no additional cost to your business. I have seen businesses offer books, gift cards and other tangible items by collecting emails and send the customer to a form to get their physical address. Keep in mind the more information you ask for before developing a strong relationship will decrease your response.
Conclusion
Start collecting emails so you can communicate with your customers. If you have never done email marketing before consider hiring a professional or do the leg work needed to find out what your customers want. Once you see what needs they have and what you can do to help, you can set up a strategy to deliver valuable information to them on a regular basis.
Note: Why don’t you just offer these kinds of things on social media? You can, but posting on social media may or may not be seen. You can be assured an email will go directly to the customers because they gave you their email address. It is a deeper level of trust to get an email address than a page like, connection or follower.
Email marketing is building relationships. Relationships build business. #Christianbusiness #Christianentrepreneur Click To Tweet
