Kill Your Slow Season with Targeted Email Marketing

Winter is making its presence known, and you may notice a decrease in customer inquiries and appointments as a result. Don’t fret, as your business is not the only one facing a slower season.

As the winter storms roll-in, what can set your business apart from the others is how your team utilizes this new found bandwidth. Right now is the perfect time to launch a thoughtful email marketing campaign.

When it comes to launching an impactful email marketing campaign, it helps to have a plan in place.

Here are some tips for a successful email campaign so your business can keep customer interest warm even while the temperatures outside stay cool!

Determine Your Message

We recommend taking sufficient time to outline the reason you want to contact current customers and/or potential customers. Clarity in purpose will likely lead to better results!

Are you interested in highlighting a special promotion, encouraging customers to like your social media pages or sharing fun photos of the team? This core marketing goal will help determine other aspects of your campaign.

Additionally, think about your sales goals for the season, quarter, or year. How many customer leads do you need to meet those goals?

Choose Your Audience

Let’s assume you’ve identified a specific message, which aims to achieve a specific goal. The next step is choosing an audience that will be receptive to your message.

Hopefully, your team has diligently entered customer and prospect information over the last nine to 10 months into a lead management tool. If not, an online marketing company can curate a list of contacts that could be highly interested in your services.

We’ll get this out of the way early: we don’t recommend targeting everyone in the Rolodex for an email campaign. A tailored message requires a tailored audience.

For example, if the goal is to drive more online reviews on Google and Facebook, consider a segment that meets the following criteria:

• Recently purchased a product or service
• Provided positive feedback (via a feedback card, email or phone)
• Been a customer for at least one year

Choosing the right audience is essential to the success of your email marketing campaign.

Deliver Fresh Content

Go for a fun, personal tone for the content of your message. Loosen up on the industry jargon. Your “fresh take” starts with the email subject line. Aim to achieve a few things with the subject line:

• Succinctly convey the email’s purpose
• Use catchy, but appropriate, words and phrases
• Avoid spammy symbols and ‘calls to action’

Lastly, consider incorporating photos, links to your blog, or even appropriate memes. For more tips on creating the right subject line, read this blog post: Get More Opens: 15 Email Subject Line Formulas that Work.

Evaluate the Results

Are you evaluating open rate, link clicks, online purchases, or landing page form submissions? Maybe something else? If you’re partnering with a marketing agency, you don’t actually need to get bogged down with deciphering and compiling results – the marketing company will sift through the data on your behalf. They can share powerful insights, plus potential next steps.

Email marketing can help you keep your leads hot, even when your business is cooling off. Learn more about targeted email marketing from ReachLocal on our website.

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