If you recall from one of my previous blogs, the world of organic (free) social media is seeing a lot of changes, and the biggest one is how many people will see your posts. One of the best ways to leverage these changes is to start utilizing email marketing.

Here are five helpful tips to ensure your email marketing is elevating your brand awareness and customer experience.

1- List Creation & Segmentation

We have found that some businesses are afraid to ask for customers’ emails. However, the opposite should be true. You should be excited and confident to collect contact information, and your staff should too!

Organize your lists in a way that is easy to understand for you and anyone else that may be utilizing the program. Perhaps you send out a birthday email to clients, or your business fluctuates seasonally, organizing by like segments will make the sending process much easier.

2- Customer Journey – Working Backwards

This is my favorite part of email marketing: Walking in the customer’s shoes as they experience your brand. While we all hope that the end result is a purchase (and multiple purchases at that), there is a very slim chance that a customer will buy during their initial experience with a brand, and by slim, we are talking 8% (and dropping).

Layout your emails to walk your customers from brand awareness to education to purchase to raving fans. With the power of email automation, you can walk your customers through this path by setting up the email campaign once.

3- Personalize & Engage

“Say my name, say my name…” Destiny’s Child knew this back in 1999. Personalization and name recognition go a long way. Craft your email content to include personalization and engagement. Make readers feel special, unique. This could be as simple as utilizing the built-in personalization tools, adding consumer-based content, or having a call to action other than a sales pitch.

Savvy consumers understand that they are part of an email meant for others, but making emails appear targeted leads to better open rates, engagement, and ROI.

4- Provide Something of Value

Email marketing campaigns should do more than just inform readers about a sale or event. While those certainly do play a part, chances are if that is all you are providing, readers will become bored and forget why they wanted to let you take up space in their inbox.

Design your email sends to weave in topics of education, FAQs, and season change reminders.

5- Repurpose Content and Follow Up

It takes the average person seven times seeing something before they will act…seven times! To get your message seen, heard, and acted upon, you need to give your audience enough time to become aware and act. Photos, videos, testimonials, and FAQs all serve as great ways to say the same thing in a different way.

A safe rule with email marketing is once a week for most organizations. This allows you to stay top of mind, move across the customer journey and give timely updates as needed.

If you would like to start utilizing email marketing to build better relationships with your customers or would like to organize current lists and campaigns for better flow across the customer journey let’s talk! The team at Sutherland Weston is here for you and your marketing needs.