Email, at least in its early form, has been around for 40+ years. Widespread use of email by the general public has been around for the last 20 years or so. However, with the relatively recent birth of social media, email doesn’t seem to be getting the respect it really deserves.
According to the Direct Marketing Association’s “National Client Email Report 2015”, just over a third of companies see an ROI of roughly $40 to $50 for every $1 spent on email marketing. And a 2014 email marketing census, provided by Econsultancy, said companies attributed 23% of their sales to email marketing on average. It’s easy to see with those numbers, emails are still alive and very powerful in the digital marketing space.
This form of communication is one most everyone is familiar with, and it’s not that hard to do. Why not take advantage? Here are a few things to include and tips to keep in mind when creating a good email marketing campaign for your business.
Build Your List and a Relationship
Imagine you are planning on throwing a cocktail party. You aren’t just going to call a bunch of random phone numbers and invite them. No one would ever come. You are only going to invite people who have willingly given you their numbers; people you have most likely interacted with in the past.
Self storage email marketing is very similar. When you are building a list, you don’t want to just send to people you have no relationship with. Your list should be built from your previous customers, or any event where people may have willingly given you their contact information.
It’s also important to segment your lists. Each email should be relevant to those receiving them. You can use the information you know about them to get an idea of how you would break down each list. And while you want to provide a personal experience, you don’t want to freak the reader out by acknowledging you know something like how old they are. Ease into your relationship with the reader.
Provide Purposeful Content
You should never send out emails for the sake of sending out emails. Make sure the content of your email has a purpose and provides value to the reader. Readers won’t continue to open your emails if they don’t get anything out of it. They might even unsubscribe. You need to give the reader a reason to stay interested.
Make your email visually appealing. Don’t go too overboard with visuals, but have a good mix of design and text. No one will be very interested in an email that looks like it was copied and pasted straight out of a notepad document. And on the other end, a completely visual email may cause problems if the person receiving it has images turned off. It’s all about balance to give a good reading experience.
Also, you want the content to stay on brand. Keep your colors consistent, keep the tone and feel similar to your other platforms, and think about displaying your business’ logo somewhere in the design. This avoids any confusion as to who you are.
Develop a Strong Subject and Preview
The goal of your subject line and preview/headline is to entice the person scrolling through their inbox to click. That makes this step crucial to the success of your campaign. If the two aren’t intriguing, descriptive, or in any way relevant to your content, your chance of getting an open will diminish. The one thing you don’t want to do is make it sound spammy or bait the reader into something unrelated to what the subject and preview promised.
Include the Essentials
A call-to-action should be included in almost everything you send out, whether it is to read an article in your newsletter or to spend a coupon. It should also stand out in a way that is obvious to the reader. Don’t bury it. Something many people don’t really think about is that an email is just an email, and you can pretty much only do two things with it: reply or forward. Encourage your reader to forward the email to their friends or colleagues.
After that, your company’s name, contact information, and an unsubscribe button are a must. Having an unsubscribe button tells the reader they are the ones in charge of the interaction. It allows them to leave “the party” whenever they want. While a person unsubscribing isn’t ideal, it’s way better than making the reader feel trapped and have them block all emails you may send in the future.
Of course, there are many other details that go into self storage email marketing, and things change from one campaign to another, but knowing these aspects will give you a good start.
