As a copywriter who specialises in email marketing, it’s not surprising that I think it is the one channel you simply can’t ignore.
Email, even in the days of GDPR, spam and inboxes groaning at the weight of inbound traffic (over 300 billion a day at the last count), is a cheap and incredibly impactful way to build a relationship with your customers.
And that’s despite the increasing privacy concerns and the release of iOS14.
And iOS15.
And 16…and probably each iteration of Apple’s platform—and where Apple lead, Android will surely follow.
(This isn’t an Apple vs Android thing, by the way, Apple tend to be a little more scrappy with privacy and the like!)
And yet, many brands write emails off as yesterday’s news with the latest and greatest social media trends and “social hacks” to get likes and follows.
With everyone losing their mind over TikTok, how many people still use Clubhouse?
With Meta’s stranglehold on paid social media advertising, how many ads have been rejected and accounts shut down because of over-zealous moderation from bots, AI and occasionally, real people?
Yet, through it all, email volume has grown, year on year, and continues to bring in billions of dollars, pounds, yen and euros at the push of a button for brands big and small. All without paying per click.
But only if done right.
So how do you make the most of email marketing?
The short answer is to hire an Email Strategist and Copywriter to do it for you (cough), and the long answer?
Well, I’ll cover over the course of a new blog series that I’ve just launched:
The Auditor: The Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Great Email
(catchy, right?!)
But we should probably take a closer look at email first.
Let’s dig in.
Email—the great survivor
Lazy marketers (who are usually selling Facebook-ad-writing-services) have pronounced the death of email for almost as long as email has been around, and yet, it remains.
So the question really is less “does email still work?” and more “why does email still work?”
In my view, it’s because it allows you to get to know your customer and how they interact with you and your brand over time and enables you to build an army of dedicated brand advocates.
Remember, if your customer is on your email list, it is because they asked to be there and want to hear from you (they did ask to be there, right? DO NOT tell me you bought your email list. NOOOOOOO! It really isn’t worth the damage it can do to your reputation in the eyes of your Email Service Provider, let alone the whole issue of CONSENT, PEOPLE!).
And if they asked to hear from you, the least you can do is to send them an email, right?
And sure, they might unsubscribe, but success isn’t measured by the number of subscribers you have but by the amount of money you make. If they don’t want to buy from you, let them unsubscribe.
No hard feelings—there are plenty of willing subscribers waiting just around the corner to fill their shoes.
If you embrace email, you can get to know your customers better—what they like, what they don’t like, and even engage in a conversation with them.
In fact, you should aim to engage in conversation with them.
Not only does this build tremendous brand loyalty, but it helps your long-term deliverability and helps to keep your emails out of the dreaded spam folder.
And someone who is engaged with your brand is much more likely to buy from your brand.
And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?!
A valuable asset for building great relationships
The beauty of email marketing is that your email list is yours. It’s a valuable asset for your business and one that you own—and put to use—whenever and however you choose.
Where Facebook can punish you for saying the wrong thing or throttle your visibility because of the latest algorithm, email gives you wonderful freedom to do and say what you want (within reason, of course).
And how your customer. interacts with your email will tell you a lot
Let’s say they’ve bought something from you—you’ve got access to their name and email address. If it’s a physical product, you’ve got their actual address too.
physic
Based on what they’ve bought, you’ve got an idea of what interests them and judging by how much they’ve spent with you, you can make a good estimate about how much disposable cash they’ve got lying around.
And it doesn’t just stop there
You can see what products they’ve browsed recently, what they added to their shopping basket and even how long they hovered over the “Buy Now” button before clicking it—or not.
You can recommend products that will complement what they’ve bought or even give recommendations on what other people like (Amazon use this social proof incredibly well…learn from them!).
You can make reasonable guesses about how much people will spend with you in future and even predict how long it will be before they come back to buy from you again.
And if they don’t come and buy again, you can take steps to bring them back into the fold.
This is just the customer behaviour you can monitor—it doesn’t even begin to take into account all the rich information you can gain by asking questions!
Quizzes and pop-ups, links and likes all give you valuable data points you can use to write even more personalised and impactful emails that drive amazing brand loyalty—if done right.
It really is fascinating!
Yet, with all this data comes a responsibility not to misuse it.
Cross the line into creepy territory, and you risk an unsubscribe.
Fail to get proper consent or fail to unsubscribe someone when asked, and you risk more—a deactivated email account and even a hefty fine.
Doing email…right
As an email strategist, I’ve read and written hundreds of emails and over the course of The Auditor blog series, I’ll share some things to look out for—and some tips of some things to do—so you can stay master your email strategy and write campaigns that will have your audience begging for more.
But if that sounds like too much like hard work, let’s chat:
I might just be able to help with that.