To email or not to email your customers...that is question.
Monday, October 12, 2009 at 4:12PM If you sell products online then it is important to communicate with your customers via email. However, it is important not to communicate with them too frequently as it can easily be marked as spam by automatic filters or manually by your customers. If your website does not sell products or services online then it is much harder to obtain their email address in the 1st place.
Although it is possible to obtain emails through "member only" offers, tech savvy customers have to believe that they will get valuable information from you repeatedly. If they believe that your offer will only provide them with valuable information only once then they will not enter an email address that they check often. Many tech savvy customers now have separate email addresses that they keep for sites that require email authentication.
The most effective form of email communication happens when you have products or services that you offer on your site and your customers are eager to find out when you have promotions that they can take advantage of, however even this type of communication has to be kept to a minimum in order to avoid your emails to be improperly identified as spam.
Use technology to target your customers so your communication efforts will result in the highest conversion rates possible. Let me give you an example. Amazon.com sells thousands of products. I purchase Blu Ray DVDs frequently from Amazon. Amazon will send me email communications when other Blu Ray DVDs are available because their software understands that is the type of product I am most likely to purchase. Because Amazon.com's emails are of interest to me I continue to let them send me emails again and again, instead of adding a quick filter to my email program or unsubscribing from their email newsletter. If they would have sent me emails about sales offers for products that I am not interested in or sent me emails to frequently I would have unsubscribed immediately.
Email communication is a vital form of marketing, however use is it sparingly and target your customers as much as possible. It is not necessary to send ALL of your users the same email at the same time. Send targeted emails, send them infrequently (1-2 times a month at the maximum), and make sure the content is of interest to your customer.
Companies that send frequent email communications will find that their conversion rates will be extremely low, and fewer and fewer of their emails will actually be seen by their customer. Customers also actively avoid companies that send frequent emails, and thus this type of advertising can directly hinder your sales revenue if it is not properly utilized. Email campaigns, for the most part, should be used to update your customers on new products, and sales offers. There are quite a few technical considerations you should think about before you start your email campaign, but what is even more important is to put yourself in place of your customer. Make sure that your customer will be intrigued by the content of your email. It only takes one click before your email never shows up in your customer's inbox again. Email marketing should be used to communicate with your existing customers. Trying to find new customers with email marketing rarely works and can be detrimental to your existing business.
Vinod Tonangi | www.tonangi.com | phone: 201.252.7265 | fax: 619.566.4043
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Reader Comments (2)
I personally dnt think there is anything wrng with emailing your customers as long as they have subscribed to your mailing. Even if you risl the email being sent to their spam box there is still a chance that it will hit the correct box. Besides, if they subscribe to your mailing, they knw to add your email address to their address book.
Misty,
The entire concept of mass emailing people and hoping they respond is not something that people can do anymore. I tried to explain this in the article, however I may have not explicitly stated this properly. If you send your customers too many emails not only will they not take action when they see your email, but they will avoid purchasing from you because of you 'annoyed' them by sending them too many frequent mails.
Your customer list should be treated like gold. If you send too many irrelevant emails your customers will again become annoyed. It is important to understand these psychological principles that play a part for your sales.