How many times have you planned to send out email campaigns once a week or even once a month and then pushed it aside?
Consistency is hard and it’s one of the number reasons email marketing efforts fail for many businesses. Other tasks come up, months go by and suddenly your subscribers forget who you are and when they signed up for your emails.
Sound familiar?
Anyone can send out an email campaign once, twice, even a few times. What makes an email program successful is consistency. Much like blogging, email marketing requires a long-term effort.
Subscriber Expectations
Did you promise your subscribers an email newsletter every month in return for their email address? Are you holding up your end of the bargain?
The biggest mistake you can make is to over-promise and under-deliver.
Let’s say you sold a customer a subscription to use your software and promised them it would help them do “x”. But it turns out the feature they needed was buggy and didn’t work quite how they had hoped. You’d have one unhappy customer on your hands.
The same experience happens with email. If you cannot uphold customer expectations with your newsletter they will turn to someone else who can provide them with the value they were promised.
Building a Long-Term Relationship
Trust isn’t acquired overnight. Like the personal relationships in our lives, they take time to blossom. You might have a real connection with someone from the start. Other relationships take months or even years until you feel comfortable with someone.
Sending email campaigns on a regular basis can help to build trust with a larger percentage of your audience. The most successful businesses in the world were not built overnight. You shouldn’t expect your email program to encourage people to buy immediately either. Email marketing is most effective when you look at is as a long-term investment.
People buy when the time is right for them or you give them a compelling reason to do so. 75% of the time a purchase will be made when your customer fully believes in what you are selling them.
Timing is Key
Consistency starts with proper planning and strategizing. If you’re only planning emails a few days or even weeks in advance you might be missing out on big opportunities.
Retail is the perfect example of timing and seasonality. It’s difficult to find a new winter coat in the middle of Summer, unless you’re buying online. And even then it can be a challenge.
Planning your email concepts months in advance can give you the ability to promote your products when your customers need them most or are most likely to buy.
Creating an email calendar is simple and can drastically improve your email program. It’s one of the key email services we offer with our clients at OpenMerit.
Jot down a few key dates, holidays, or events you might have coming up. These could be based on the weather, your company’s anniversary, customer birthday’s, new features your releasing, weird holidays like National Donut Day, whatever time related events you can think of.
Your audience will then think of you, instead of your competition, if you give them a reminder when they might need it most.
Top of Mind
Branding is all about being in the back of your customer’s mind when they might need your products or services. Every advertisement or email campaign you send isn’t going to turn into a sale. That’s a mindset that won’t get you very far.
Sending out consistent email campaigns will help you build a presence in your customer’s mind. When they are ready to buy they’ll think of you if you have put in the work to gain their trust over the long-haul.
