Tap Into Your Current Customer Base With Email Marketing

If you want to have a big marketing push for a holiday, end of the sales year, or to push one of your products or services, an email marketing campaign is a great way to reach an audience that’s already likely to be interested. The way to do it is by targeting and making use of your already existing customer base, since they’ve already shown enough interest by purchasing your products or services already. Here’s a quick guide to help you form a successful email marketing campaign for your current customer base.

Build or Expand Your Email List

The first part is the most difficult and time consuming because it involves building a large enough list of customer emails for your marketing campaign to be successful. You can have a great marketing pitch to them, but without a substantially-sized database you won’t have the success you’re hoping for. Here are some quick tips to help you grow your customer list:

• Have an online form on your website where customers can submit their inquiry-this generates leads since they will submit their emails
• Run a contest or promotion where people need to submit their contact information including their email to win or get a coupon
• Start a loyalty program in your store or online that requires their email
• Start an online newsletter that sends people your best blog articles, promotions, coupons, and so on
• Have an online store for customers to purchase your products or book appointments with you where they have to use an email

The main goal to growing your email list is that you must collect as many emails as you can. Also, make sure you brush up on state/country privacy laws where your business is located to ensure you don’t break the law in any way. When building your database make sure to record the date when you received a lead from them. It will make things easier in the future.

Offer Something of Value

Now that you have a large enough list of emails from your customer base, you need to make sure that your email marketing campaign is interesting enough to convert them into a paying customer again. You can’t just show them the same old product and ask them to please come back and buy it again, you have to give them a good enough reason. Here are some tips to help increase conversion rates:

• Make a short-term, one time offer — example: “Get 25% off of Product A this weekend only!”
• Give a clear and simple call to action and repeat it a few ways throughout the email — example: “Shop now and get $50 off” or “Book your next appointment”
• Tell your customers why they should buy from you again and not a competitor such as faster service times, lower prices, and so on.
• Throw in an extra benefit to them as a returning customer to make them feel appreciated

You might already have a larger promotion that you’re marketing through other channels to use, but make sure you keep your email marketing short, sweet and clear for your customers. Don’t overload or confuse them with too much information.

Filter Your List

The best way to get the most efficient results is to narrow your list by filtering out customers according to criteria you know would exclude them. Here are some quick tips on filters you can use:

• By date — if your records show they just purchased your product or service recently they might not be likely to do again so soon
• By product type — if your database shows previous purchase history you can filter out people who haven’t bought that type of product or service
• By location — if they are far enough away they might not be likely to make the long trip to your store especially if your promotion is for a short-term sale that’s soon

This is why it is important to keep good, thorough, and accurate records in your database. The better record keeping you manage in your database, the more targeted and efficient your email marketing can be so you spend your campaign budget wisely. For more great information about email marketing read our articles “Using Email to Market Your Business” or contact us to learn how you can get started.