Intro by Skip Cohen
Email marketing is certainly not a new concept. In fact, this blog post from Nicole Begley’s archives is eight years old! And as much as things have changed, some things NEVER change.
Today, because of the pandemic, the importance of email marketing has never been more critical. It’s also never been more abused, making it even more important for you to use it effectively.
Think about how much time you and your target audience are spending online these days. Because of the pandemic, the phone and the Internet are the only way we keep in touch. That means your system for email, your website, and your blog are more important than ever before.
By Nicole Begley
From the moment you start your business you should be collecting email addresses and KEEPING THEM ORGANIZED! Keeping them organized is key, I think I am up to 15 different email lists.
I have lists for pet prospects, child prospects, 2011 pet clients, 2012 pet clients, 2010 family clients, etc. You can’t go wrong in creating too many lists as you can very easily send an email to more than one list, but you can’t send an email to only a few people in a list very easily.
What if you have a special offer for past clients? Having the past client folders is helpful for that, as well as having them broken out by genre. I have separate branding for my pet and family divisions, but even if I didn’t, I may have great pet information that I want to get to my pet clients only. By separating them through the year I can target specific years for certain promotions.
I may choose to offer digital files to those clients from three years ago before I purge my files, if I already have a list created it takes me 30 seconds. If I need to go through my files and pick out each 2009 client it may take quite a bit of time.
Email marketing is one of the easiest ways to stay in touch with people that have already used your services or have expressed some sort of interest in your business. This list is GOLD, treat it well.
A monthly or quarterly newsletter is a great way to keep them up to speed with the latest news and opportunities from your studio. I highly recommend that you take the time to make email marketing heartfelt and personal. Let a little bit of your personality shine through as that will help potential clients connect with you on a deeper level and it will feel less sales-y.
Successful email marketing should contain:
- An attention-grabbing title. Would you rather open the “spring 2013 newsletter” or “Opportunities to create custom wall-art.” You can experiment by sending the same newsletter to two different lists but simply change the title to see which has a higher open rate.
- Use your newsletter as a way to build your relationship with your clients, not simply focus on making a sale.
- Add a call to action in your email.
Here’s the bottom-line…the pandemic has changed everything about marketing. Emails and direct mail give you the opportunity to stay in touch with your target audience, especially your past clients and prospects.
So many of you stress over finding new clients, but totally ignore everybody in your database from the past. And while Nicole’s core business is pet photography, the need to better organize your email lists is a necessity for every specialty!
Take a look at Marathon’s Email Marketing service. Easy-to-use Drag and Drop Editor and tons of features. www.MarathonEmailService.com.
