Have you got an email list? If you’re not quite sure what is meant by the term, essentially, it’s just a list of all of your past customers, networking contacts who wanted to stay in touch, potential customers who weren’t quite ready to commit and other individuals who have agreed to receive updates and marketing material from you. If you haven’t started growing an email list, why not?
Email marketing has a reputation as the least sexy of all of the digital marketing disciplines, but the reality is that it can be cheap as chips and, when carried out effectively, offers one of the highest levels of return-on-investment of all of the digital marketing channels. Research carried out by the Direct Marketing Association found that for every £1 invested in email marketing, the average ROI is between £40 and £50, depending on whether you are a B2B or B2C business.[1] In anyone’s book, that’s a good return.
You don’t need an all-singing, all-dancing email marketing platform to keep in touch with your leads – a basic Active Campaign platform, for example, starts at just $9 per month[2], and tools like Hubspot and Mailchimp offer email marketing functionality for free, so there’s no reason why you can’t sent out an attractive and engaging email once a month to keep your prospects up to date with the latest news and top tips, and keep your business top of mind.
The reality is that not everyone is ready for the services you offer right at this moment in time. It’s also impossible to check in with all of your contacts on a regular basis manually to see whether or not they are ready for you! Following up with leads is one thing, but contacting everyone in your contact list individually is going to take a significant chunk of time out of your working week when you could be carrying out billable client work.
It’s possible to make your emails and newsletters feel personal to your customers, even if they are broadcast to your entire mailing list. Adding your contact’s first name, segmenting your audience into different groups and adapting the content subtly for each group can help to make emails feel personal and tailored, and can help build positive relationships with your customers without you having to speak to them all individually. And for those customers who are now approaching being ready for the services you offer, the gentle reminder could really help re-establish that relationship with you and open the lines for communication again. You can also keep an eye on the open and engagement rates for your emails to establish which of your contacts are your biggest fans – another helpful tool when it comes to reaching out to potential customers.
If you’ve got a list, but want to add more good quality potential leads to it, why not create a lead magnet – a useful document or template that you could add to your website that potential customers gain access to if they submit their email address. Just remember, if you are emailing any of your contacts, make sure that they have given consent for you to market to them (or are emailing them for their legitimate interest, depending on the lawful basis for marketing that you are working to under the GDPR[3]), and that you give them the opportunity to opt out of your mailing list at any time.
Happy emailing!
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[1] https://dma.org.uk/uploads/misc/marketers-email-tracker-2019.pdf
[2] https://www.activecampaign.com/pricing
[3] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/lawful-basis-for-processing/