It can be argued that the main goal to successful business marketing is building a strong, reliable and honest relationship with its customers. It is not one, which should be viewed upon as a matter of over complication.
Disputably, it is no different to a relationship that is established in person. As Mohammadi, Malekian, Nosrati and Karimi rationalize in the article ‘Email Marketing as a Popular Type of Small Business Advertisement: A Short Review’ email marketing involves strategic planning and the notion of setting realistic goals that purely aids to build and encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.
Take for example the first time you meet a customer face to face, you would unconsciously be soft spoken, gentle and immediately informative about all the main features rather than ‘waffling’ about uninteresting features. Essentially, your priority would be to keep the customers interest throughout the whole conversation. It’s only polite that you make the best use of their time and yours. Evidently, this begins to build a strong relationship with your customer beginning on optimistic terms. Inferred from the article if small businesses from a commercial perspective merely follow the same face-to-face nature through the media of e-mailing they could.
As reported by the article there are various ways in which small business can make e-mailing their customers successful. Whilst browsing through my emails today I noticed a few of the techniques from the article in practice.
Email Marketing Tips for Permission-Based Contact:
A few days ago whilst being busy away creating a scrapbook for my boyfriend, I joined the company Pinterest. In actual fact all I was looking for was images of cut-outs I could make with scrap paper. To my surprise joining the website was a lot more of a longer process that I anticipated.
Referring back to the article, it is noted that before joining a website customers may be in the position where they have to confirm their email address before their subscription is fully validated. This notion relies upon the technique of permission- based email marketing. Mohammadi emphasises that you should only send a customer an email if they have granted the permission for you to do so. Arguably, small businesses if not granted the permission at first by the customer may be at harm for damaging their sender reputation and hurting their marketing efforts as a result of customers tagging your email as spam. By businesses sending emails to the new subscriber to confirm their email address, the double opt-in phrase ensures that they have a valid email address for the customer and proof that customer requested to receive email communications from you.
So does it actually work? Well… yes ‘arguably’. By confirming that the email address was valid and specifically mine, as a result, I have received another 4 follow up emails from the same small business. Therefore, from the perspective of the business it is a technique that works. As a result of the confirmation, the business is arguably safe guarded from sending any spam marketing email to invalid email address, which in turn does not damage their sender reputation. Furthermore, the business in this occasion ‘Pinterest’ were able during the customer – business relationship able to make me as the customer actually open and read one of their emails.
Keep the Message Relevant and Personal:
Another successful technique as commented by Mohammadi is the concept of personalising emails through triggered email marketing. For any small business it can be said that a key to a successful email marketing strategy is through building strong customer relationships. Any business by using all the automation tools and customer information that is available to them have the ability to really personalise the email that as a result entices the customer to read on, click on the links and in all actually read the email before deleting it.
A few days after my confirmation email, Pinterest sent me a follow up email that had links to the website with images that other people but moreover I was interested in. A few days before the email, I was busy away looking at spider-man images, pictures of the Bahamas and images of baby grow’s. As a result of searching for such things on the website, in the follow up email there were several links to ‘star wars party ideas’ and girls clothing. By keeping the messages personal (i.e. linking it to items that I have searched before the email was successful in its nature as it reminded me of what I was doing previously on the website. As a result I read the whole email and did not delete it as I intended it to keep it for future reference. Furthermore, by also starting the message with a personalised line ‘Hello Komal’ it further made me feel as if the whole email was personally directed and personalised for me, in turn allowing me to feel as a valued customer.
As a result of the techniques noted above and many more, email marketing through the use of email communication increases awareness and leads and builds up relationships with prospective and existing customers. Essentially, small businesses are able to build a trust and are able to maintain an on-going dialogue with its audience.