It’s 2021. And consumers are becoming increasingly savvy to sales tactics.
They are craving experiences, connections, and a meaningful relationship with the brands that they buy from.
Solely focusing on the end sale is not the best way for brands to achieve this.
Instead, brands need to expand their thinking and aim to engage consumers in other ways.
Fortunately, email is one of the most flexible marketing channels available for brands. And there are lots of ways of creating email campaigns that aren’t just about selling.
Here are 5 of our favourites:
Better brand awareness
Building and maintaining brand awareness should always be a key focus area for any business. Particularly SMEs and start-ups.
But businesses often struggle to have the necessary resource and channels at their disposal. Or at least, face challenges from senior management in getting budget sign-off on activities that don’t generate immediate, tangible results.
Fortunately, email marketing is the ideal channel to develop brand awareness.
It offers a direct line to an audience. It is cost-effective. And generates better engagement than most other marketing channels.
Try the below steps to get started:
- Ensure brand consistency in all email design and messaging
- Share and/or link to your best content, tips, and resources
- Include your social media channels to reinforce brand awareness
- Ask for feedback and ratings to help spread the positive word about your brand
Build reputation
Whatever industry a brand is in, chances are they want to be seen as the expert. The brand that consumers seek out as they are known to be the best and most authoritative in their field.
If a consumer has already purchased from a brand or has signed up to email communications, they clearly want to hear from them. Meaning email marketers have an already engaged audience to communicate with and build their reputation upon.
There are so many ways to build upon reputation within email. From simple tactics to advanced strategy:
- Set up double opt-in when new recipients sign up, to be 100% sure they are genuine and engaged
- Put effort into your subject line to ensure that it is not only engaging, but doesn’t flag your email as spam
- Utilise marketing automation to ensure that you are sending emails to your audience at the perfect time
- Incorporate personalisation into your emails to ensure they are as relevant as possible and offer a one-to-one experience
- Incorporate dynamic content blocks into your emails to share your latest ratings and reviews in real-time
- Showcase that you are an expert in your industry with the use of content. Such as blog posts, guides, videos, top tips, and Q&As
Nurture leads
Focusing on the end-sale is all well and good. But there are steps that have to be made before a business can get to that point.
Nurturing leads is the process of keeping potential customers engaged and warmed up to your brand. So that they are more likely to consider buying from you in the future.
The process should focus on building relationships and trust. As opposed to just sales.
By using automation, brands can send out an entire series of nurturing emails to achieve just that. For instance:
- Sending welcome emails to introduce a potential customer to the brand
- Sharing of the latest brand news and updates
- Showcasing useful content, tips, and advice
- Sharing social media channels for them to connect with
- Sharing important information such as support channels and delivery times
Keeping customers happy
It costs five times more to bring on a new customer compared to an existing one. And nurturing those new customers to spend as much as your existing ones costs 16 times more.
That’s why keeping customers happy should be a top priority for any business.
While everyone loves a bargain, customer satisfaction isn’t all about discount codes and sales. Loyal customers want more from a brand. They want to feel involved.
And with an increasing amount of consumers buying from experiences, not just products. Providing current customers with an excellent customer experience should be key to any marketing campaign.
And with email, this can be easily done:
- Ask for their thoughts, feedback, and suggestions to inform future strategy and make recipients feel involved in your business
- Invite recipients to take part in polls and surveys
- Share exclusive content, pre-launches, and event invitations
Building community
After being disconnected from others for so long. The world is craving community in everything we do. Therefore unsurprisingly, research shows that consumers are increasingly craving brand community, as opposed to more sales ads.
And building community around a brand is key to all of the above points. Therefore it should be peppered throughout all of your email campaigns and communications as much as possible.
Because 84% of consumers trust online recommendations as much as those from friends and family. So by promoting their community, brands are offering further reassurance that their consumers can be confident in purchasing from them later down the line.
- Share user-generated content (UGC) in the form of customer stories, reviews, and social posts
- Encourage engagement through other community channels to open up the conversation
- Share fun content, such as quizzes and competitions
- Include social feeds directly within your emails with the use of dynamic content blocks
Is your brand focused on the sell, sell, sell?
Then let us show you there’s so much more to email.
Our team of experts have supported brands in a wide variety of industries to increase brand awareness, build a community, and keep their customers happy. All via email marketing.
Get in touch to find out how we could help you.