Develop an Effective Email Marketing Strategy

If your email marketing strategy is limited to sending out an email to everyone on your list when you’re having a sale, you may be missing out on a lot of loyalty-building opportunities. Consider this: if all your customers hear from you are sale prices, then price is the only yardstick you’ll be measured by. But if you use email as a tool to develop relationships with your customers, you can encourage greater loyalty, and, ideally, create advocates who will recommend you to their friends.

So when should you be emailing your customers? According to a recent article from MarketingVOX, a basic strategy that marketers often overlook is: “use every existing customer touch point.” Personalized messages, first-time buyer offers, and welcome messages for new subscribers are simple and effective ways to encourage customer engagement. When combined with targeted offers, these communications can help foster strong and lasting customer relationships.

Here are a few important email touch points that they mentioned to keep in mind when developing your email marketing strategy:

• Welcome emails: The point at which a customer first opts in to receive product information is an ideal opportunity to offer up a “getting to know you” survey, a website tour, and invitations to interact with your brand on social networks.
• First Purchase: Thank the customer for his or her purchase, and offer a discount on their next purchase.
• Subsequent purchases: Avoid “message fatigue” by increasing the relevance of communications based on customer behavior, and taking the pacing or cadence of your emails into consideration.
• Social media: Give customers the opportunity to share email content and offers via social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

For more details, read A Soup to Nuts List of Email Marketing Touch Points at marketingvox.com.

Do you have any favorite email marketing tactics that have worked for you in the past – as a marketer or a customer? Let us know in the comments.

What’s Next?

Read Email Marketing: Driving Customer Opt-in To Your Email List on pbSmart Essentials.