5 Ways to Improve Your Business Emails

Why Email Matters

With quite possibly the highest Return on Investment (ROI) of any marketing strategy, email can be a cost-efficient solution for your advertising needs.

Before getting too adventurous with your email strategies, try out some proven methods of successful emailing to get started. This approach will keep you focused, lower your costs, and make things easier overall.

Below, we’re offering you 5 tactics to create effective business emails to help expand your advertising capabilities.

Tip #1: Recurring Emails

The “monthly newsletter” has long been a staple in email marketing, and with good reason: it’s a fantastic way to keep customers in the loop while encouraging repeat purchases.

Depending on the size of your business, the frequency and content of your emails may vary. For instance, a larger chain might send out frequent weekly emails to promote new products, whereas a small or medium business might use quarterly digests to give an overview of their catalogue.

The right frequency for your updates will be up for you to discern. But the core of this first recommended strategy is keep in touch with your customers about the products or content that you’ve recently added to your store. Each time you add new products, alert the customers who have signed up to receive emails from you. This will help maintain their interest in your company.

If you don’t add products frequently, you can also send emails when you add new content or have an upcoming event to announce. Adding blog posts or some great new user-generated content like photos or video? That’s worth an email.

Tip #2: Post-Purchase Email Follow-Ups

Many times, post-purchase emails seem lifeless and boring. They typically don’t offer much aside from the requisite “we’ve received your order” and “your order has shipped” messages. This can lead to customers feeling like just a number to you, which nobody likes to experience.

Fortunately, there are ways to make your emails more human. By creating conversation in your emails, you’ll not only establish more of a relationship with your customers, but also receive useful feedback!

Asking your customers for feedback about the quality of their experience will give you insight into what you can do to enhance the process, along with improving your credibility. Open the door for comments, questions or an exchange of ideas (“Any suggestions about what we should add to our store next?”).

This will get the ball rolling for your emails, as well as customers rolling in!

Tip #3: Deals, Deals, Deals

Deals. There it is for a fourth time, just to get the message across.

A brilliant strategy to keep customers coming back to your store is to send them an incentive like a special deal, discount, or a limited-time-only coupon code. The appeal of savings is often too good to pass up, which will result in more clicks and more purchases.

If you are a beginner in business, only do this sparingly. Offering too many discounts might condition your customers to only shop when those deals are available. Consider saving those specials for occasions like new product releases or holidays — they’ll make the discounts seem much sweeter. And on that note…

Tip #4: Emails for Events and Holidays

Holidays are an excellent time to market, as shopping increases tremendously around holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. I mean, who doesn’t like Black Friday shopping?

Research or consider which of your products can sensibly be promoted prior to an upcoming event, season or holiday. If summer is coming and you sell bathing suits, that’s certainly cause for at least one email. If you ship homemade cookies, prepare an email for National Cookie Day. The list goes on and on.

Every store will have different peak times for promoting their products via email, whether it’s multiple times per year (ex. clothing, which changes each season) or during one major season (ex. lawn and garden equipment, during early spring). At nearly any time of year, you can send out these types of promotions. It’s all about being aware of what’s going on and what your customers want.

Tip #5: Re-engagement Emails

Getting the second (or third, and so on) sale can be tricky. Crafting interesting and captivating marketing messages can be tricky, which is why formulating personalized emails to bring customers back can make a huge difference.

Sending emails in a series can be less overwhelming than sending one massive email. You can start with a basic “it’s been a while” email, follow up with a message introducing new products or features, and then offer a discount or coupon code. By dividing your email list based on which customers have purchased what products and when they purchased them, you can easily send messages to customers who haven’t bought from you in six months with a personal touch.

Only the Beginning

Email marketing offers incredible advertising potential, as you can now clearly see. However, it’s important to start simple and build your way up gradually. Neither you or the customers want to be overwhelmed.

Give these tips a try and see how they improve your email game. Just start small and work your way to the top!