You come into the office on Monday morning, turn on your email, click send/receive and wait as a list of emails come in, most of them not of interest to you. And what do you do? Delete. Done. Now you can go onto the important stuff.
I think email marketing works and it is definitely a valuable asset to any company trying to keep in touch with their clients. The trick is in when you send it, how often and the purpose of it.
Sending your e-blasts on a Friday, over the weekend or even on a Monday is not a good idea. Nobody wants to start their week at work going through a ton of emails. The likelihood of them actually opening your email to read it is almost non-existent. So that was a wasted effort on your part and most likely they will not open any of your upcoming emails either.
How do you fix this? Send your e-blasts on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday in the middle of the day, at random times but not too close to the end of the day. You will have better chances of the email being opened and looked at, and maybe even kept for reference.
So now that we know when to send it so it’s given at least a chance, let’s look at how often we should send e-blasts and the purpose behind them.
Sending an e-blast once a week to the same customer list is far too often. It doesn’t even matter that you are offering them “the best deal ever”. Keeping in touch with your clients once a month to offer them a special promotion or a news-worthy story is fine, and definitely acceptable. Make your e-blasts consistent in branding to ensure that your customer remembers you the next time they are in need of the service you provide. Do your best to create a visually appealing, easy to follow and to the point e-blast. If it’s complicated and chaotic, they won’t read it! If you are a busy business owner who just doesn’t have time to design and manage his email marketing, or think of interesting topics to use, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do this as it is important to keep in touch with your clients. You can simply hire a marketing company who will manage an entire email campaign for you. From writing copy, to sourcing photography, designing the actual e-blasts and managing your customer lists, a marketing company is your solution to a successful email marketing campaign with minimal effort from you – the busy business owner.
No matter which route you choose as long as you remember these three points, you will have more success with your email marketing campaign.
