Email Marketing

The Promotional Email: How to Start a Successful Campaign

We all hate spam.

The hatred is universal and unequivocal. I have not met one single person who enjoys receiving spam in his inbox. But yet, spam still exists—in shocking numbers. Because of this, many businesses are gun-shy when it comes to email marketing—afraid that they are going to frustrate their list if they email too often.

Email Marketing

Last year, Google went to great lengths to clean out the email overload within your inbox. They introduced the Gmail Priority Inbox.

The promotional email is one of the most abused and misunderstood marketing methods that exists. But it’s also one of the most powerful, if used correctly. Even with all of the hoops that you have to jump through, you can still get your emails opened and read. Like many other marketing channels, the promotional email is a balancing act. A florist that knows how to market to their list will have a few distinct advantages over their competitors, namely:

  1. They will have a targeted list to market to. You will have a list of customers and prospects. Having a customer database is highly important if you want to consistently retain your customers. Having a database of people who have not yet purchased products from your business is also important.
  2. Drive sales into the business. Emailing your list with an offer that you are trying to promote will drive sales. When you email a valuable offer, people will buy into it.
  3. Your customers and prospects will be more engaged. When you send emails of value to your list, you start an ongoing relationship with your customers. This can lead to more sales, more loyal customers, and increased brand authority. Email marketing, when used effectively, can facilitate your marketing efforts and can help you wildly accomplish your goals.

Acquiring an email list

If you are selling flowers online, then every new customer should give their email address to be added onto your list. And even if you are not making sales online, whenever someone purchases from you in store ask for the customer’s email address. Acquiring a database of your customers should be relatively easy.

And then you have the list of prospects.  This list will be comprised of people who haven’t yet bought from you. You will need to provide a reason for someone to sign up to this list. Offering an incentive will make things a lot easier.

Here are some example incentives that you can offer:

For these examples, we’ll say that you specialize in floral arrangements for weddings.

  • You can offer a short, free ebook that details how to co-ordinate a wedding flower plan.
  • Instead of an ebook, you can give them access to a video that tells them how to match flowers or styles. You can also offer a free webinar.
  • You can offer a short 10 minute phone consultation on the best floral arrangements for weddings. This way, you can also get their phone number.

You will have to offer a slice of value to your prospects if you want their email address. Ebooks, videos, membership access, webinars are all options on the table. You should know your market best, so the content you offer should what your prospects would want to see.

Starting the email campaign

We’re going to talk about the actual nuts and bolts of a promotional in the next post in the series. For now, we’re going to discuss the objectives of email marketing.

Firstly, you want to drive more sales.

Secondly, you want to spark active engagement with your customers.

When it comes to driving sales, you either want to solve a problem/issue, or you want to hit on the core desires of your audience.

Solving a problem should be easy. First, you need to identify a problem that your product/service can fix. Your email will be advertising the fact that your product/service/company can alleviate a specific problem. It’s as basic as fulfilling a need.

Meeting a core desire simply comes down to knowing your market. You have to know 2 things:

  1. Who your average customer is. This means knowing the average customer profile (i.e. knowing who usually buys your product or service).
  2. Why they would need your service.  What would make them want to buy from you.

So, let’s go back to the wedding florist example. If you know that your average customer is a female that is obviously going to get married, and you know that she needs your business because she is concerned about the look of her wedding, then you can deduce that the most basic and core desire is beauty. She wants her wedding to be absolutely beautiful and hopes that your business can fulfill that desire.

Every email you write should be tethered to a core desire. If beauty is what your customers want, then your emails need to show what is achievable with your product or service.

If they truly want or need what your company has to offer, then sales should flow fairly easily.

So, now that we’ve discussed your options when it comes to acquiring a list, we’re going to talk about what to actually put in the emails in the 2nd post in the series.