We are all social beings. One thing we haven’t been able to do for the last few weeks is see the smiling faces of our customers coming in our doors. We have COVID-19 to thank for that but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep connected.
We’re going to look at ways that we can still connect with our audience, share important updates and find alternative ways to sell where possible.
In this article we will be focused on the use of email marketing such as MailChimp or Mailerlite in order to do so but some of these items apply to other email platforms and even other marketing tactics.
Make sure your contacts are up to date
Whether you use a email marketing platform or you use a CRM that has an email component to it, it’s important to make sure your customer’s information is up to date, especially their email address. If you haven’t reached out or sent a campaign, you may want to take a little bit of time to review and clean up your email lists.
Avoid the spam folder!
You’ve put the effort into updating your lists, now you need to ensure that any of your upcoming campaigns hit your subscriber’s inbox, rather than their junk or spam folder. Now, we will warn you, this can be a somewhat challenging step and requires access to your domain.
- Make sure you authenticate email or domain. Most email marketing platforms have a bottom in order to walk you through the steps. If they don’t, please ensure that you reach out to them, check their knowledge centre or set up a ticket for further instructions.
- This is a little geeky but take your authentication one step further and set up both DKIM and SPF records – this is geek speak for better mail delivery. Sometimes, some email providers will set these up for you already. If they don’t, here’s some steps:
Create a landing page to sell and collect subscribers
Collecting subscribers to your list should be part of your everyday marketing strategy, regardless of COVID-19. However, it’s given us more of a push to use it now that we can’t see our customers.
Do you need a big, huge website to do this? No! A landing page is a basically a one-page website with one purpose and one purpose only. Sell whatever it is you are trying to sell. Or even just collect email addresses to build your list.
Many email marketing platforms offer landing pages as part of their platform.
Already have an online store?
If you already have an online store, you’ve already solved half the battle. Make sure you are capturing a customer’s information and incorporating them into your email list. This allows you to follow their buying habits in your reports and allow you to send specific messages based on their previous orders.
Automated Messages to Welcome New Subscribers
At the start of a new push to get subscribers, you may notice quite a few come in and you can’t keep up with sending personalized hello’s to tell them what they can expect to see from you – whether it be weekly newsletters, promo codes etc. With automation, you can set up it up to send one as soon as a subscriber is added to a listed through what they call a trigger.
You can even do this with abandon cart notifications, freebies, even build full out funnels.
If you need assistance with your email marketing efforts, please reach out to us and we’d be happy to set you up!
