The team at Spinifex Communications International share their expert tips on how to use email as a means to target your customers, and potentially generate more sales.
Spam emails. We’ve all received them, we all hate them and they can certainly be discouraging for those of us looking at how to communicate with current or potential clients via email.
They can be beaten however, and it is our job as marketers to create email content that is both relevant and valuable to our clients to ensure that our message is not lost in an overcrowded inbox.
Let’s look at some statistics on the topic:
- The total number of worldwide email accounts is expected to expand from 3.9 billion email accounts
in 2013, to an estimated 4.9 billion in 2017 - There are roughly 100 billion emails sent and received each day
- Mobile email opens have increased by 500 per cent since 20111 as shown in the graph pictured above.
What does this mean for my business?
Email communication is both cheap and efficient, and if you’re not using it beyond sending yearly reminders for a termite inspection, then you are wasting a valuable resource.
For example, are you heading into termite season again? Maybe your clients would appreciate a quick email on the top five ways termites can get into their home – and if they are looking for any advice, they should give you a call.
Ultimately it all comes down to how valuable your email content is to your clients.
Six tips on creating valuable email content
1. Be mobile friendly
Research conducted by Litmus2, a prominent email service provider, indicates that about 48 per cent of emails are viewed on mobile devices.
2. Understand the target of your email
Think about the people who are receiving your email. What kind of clients are they? Are they interested in a termite treatment or just a general pest inspection? The more you know about the needs of your clients, the more value you can offer them, and the more likely they are to open your email.
3. Speak in a clear and accessible tone
Your average client is most probably not going to know what a ‘bait station’ is, or what it means to ‘dust a roof void’. Make sure you speak in a way that is easily understood, keeping in mind that the reader may have very little industry knowledge.
4. Be specific
Broad sweeping statements are just as irritating in written content as they are when spoken. If you want to avoid clients hitting the ‘unsubscribe’ button, make sure you are to the point, and detail straight away why they should continue reading, or why they should pick up the phone and call you.
5. Test and test again
Never stop testing your emails. Test different subject lines or different offers to see which ones generate the best response. If you have two different ideas of what you want to tell your clients, try sending both to a small segment of your clients; analyse which receive the better open rates or response, then send the more successful content to the rest of your database. Which leads to the next point.
6. Collect and analyse email data
If you aren’t collecting data on open rates, click-through rates, responses to specific offers or even which subject line was the most popular, then you are doing yourself a disservice. Find out what works, and improve upon it.
Follow these simple tips and you are on the way to making your emails a service to your clients and potential clients rather than irritating spam.
Lukas Perrott and Peter Huxley*, Spinifex Communications International
1 Statistics data obtained from ‘Email Statistics Report 2013–2017’ The Radicati Group – 2013.
2 Sourced from www.litmus.com
*Lukas Perrott and Peter Huxley work on the Bayer Amplify program providing marketing support for Bayer customers.
