Today our inboxes are flooded with email marketing campaigns, some feeling spammy, but there is no denying the impact a well-crafted message can have on your customers. Email marketing has one of the best returns on investment, on average returning over $40 for every dollar spent. In our previous Email Marketing 101 post, we talked about what email marketing is and some quick tips to get started. In this post, we’ve put together a few tips to help you expand your knowledge in email marketing and continue to increase your return.

1. Segment and Group Your Subscriber List

   Segmentation, or grouping, your audience is simply splitting your total subscribers into smaller pieces or segments. This is great for personalization in emails sent and allows you to deliver more relevant email marketing to your subscribers. For example, if you are a produce farm that offers a CSA, sells at your local farmers markets, and also raises beef, you can have three different groups/segments: CSA Subscribers, Farmers Market patrons, and Meat customers. You could then send targeted emails to each list every week and send a total farm update to everyone once a month.

2. Automation

   We’ve all received an automated email – whether that was a “thank you for your order”, an update on your online order, or a simple “thanks for subscribing” email. These types of emails are great to streamline basic communications to your customers and new subscribers because it allows you to focus on creating content for your other emails that increase your return on investment. Automated emails, especially the “thanks for subscribing” or “thanks for your order” are great for cultivating returning customers. Other examples of automated emails can be follow-up emails after an in-person purchase (especially if you use Square or other cloud-based point of sales systems), welcome emails, and incentives or offer emails.

3. Testing… Testing…

   Marketing is all about your customers and understanding their wants and needs. What better way to figure that out and know what makes your customers click on an email or link than testing? Testing here is as simple as sending 50 emails in the morning and 50 emails at night (to a different list) with the same content, and then seeing whether you get higher open or click-through rates with one group or another.

Email marketing connects you to your customers directly through their inbox – they have opted in to receive this communication from you. Making the most of it can help grow your brand and increase sales transactions. For more information on how to incorporate email marketing into your marketing strategy, contact us today at 859-550-3972 or via email at kcard@kcard.info.