Before we start talking about email marketing, let’s decide what we want from our customers. Maybe every business owner aims to grow sales and wants his customers to buy more. But what if someone buys an expensive product at once, drastically grows your daily sales, goes away and doesn’t come back? Is it exactly what you need? – I think, no. We want our customers to return to our shop again and again, tell their friends about our store and bring them too. But people have a deal with someone they can trust. And whom do we trust more? – Of course, our friends. So, our task is to turn the customers into our friends for building long-term relationships and growing their love to our brand. And here email marketing is the best helper.
How to Make Friends with a Customer?
Get Acquainted
All of us start the friendship with an acquaintance and the first meet. So to leave a positive impression, use a beautiful, clear and modern design for your newsletter. Also, it should be responsive and suit any mobile device. By the way, we have several good email templates that can help you to build wonderful newsletters. View them on ThemForest.
And the thing you should take into consideration is the following: never send newsletters without the agreement. It’s much better to introduce yourself to the customers and familiarize themselves with the content they will get in future. How to do this? – Very simple. Send the first letter to approve the subscription, where you’ll announce your newsletter, the topics you will cover, offers, and the schedule of your visits (like once a week or two times a month).
Give your customer an opportunity to unsubscribe, if you don’t want to get into spam. If he likes you from the first view, everything will be okay. So, continue on.
Find the Touch Points
What unites us with our friends? – Shared hobbies and interests. The best way to become interesting to your subscribers is to know them better and segment your base.
For example, you see that some lady buys the cosmetic product for skin in your online store. So the topic of modern cosmetics, skin care, and beauty advice could be interesting for her. But at the same time, some man bought an expensive perfume in your shop. Of course, he interests in other topics, such as new man perfumes, some modern accessories and other. That’s why we need segmentation.
Lifehack. Send the survey in your first letter where you ask for an agreement for the subscription. With its help, you’ll learn which of suggested topics can be interesting for each client. This way you’ll segment your base and will be interesting for everyone.
Be Positive
Remember, everything you send to your friends should brighten their day. Am I right? Avoid the negative thoughts and words in your letter, such as problem, pain, awful, suffering, etc. Did you feel comfortable while reading this list? I didn’t. So, turn on the happiness in your readers’ subconscious, and then they will wait for communication with you with great pleasure.
Be Honest
Never. Yes, never trick your friend. If it happens once, the trust reached for a very long time of your communication will be lost. Here we should consider this topic a bit more.
Now everybody talks about Open Rate and how drastically it depends on the email subject. This everything is great, except a little detail. In pursuit of the high results, sometimes we forget about the fact that alive and sensitive person is sitting in front of us on the further side of the monitor. And perhaps, this person likes to read our newsletter. He (or she) opens the mailbox and sees the teaser and promising subject, opens the letter, and then sees not those things he (she) expected. Your friend feels cheated. We can’t be having that.Email subject is not a straight road to the success and high sales. It’s a good way to attract an attention of the subscriber to something even more interesting inside your letter. It’s like a teaser trailer for some new movie. You must admit that it’s pretty pity when the teaser is much better than the film.
Be Generous
Never stint useful content for your friends. The higher quality of our newsletter is, the more chances it has to become the favorite one. Say, why the large online store of technical devices can’t send their customers weekly or monthly digest of interesting articles from the world of gadgets and, of course, show their new products with it? What if your friend wants to buy something useful? 🙂
And how about sending the preview for some new interesting books at the online book shop to your subscriber? You’ll do him a great serve explaining the books’ content. Why should he search it by himself, if you can save his time and help with it? – The readers will be interested if you’ll share your opinion. So, always share the best information with friends.
Be Tactful
You have some newsletter schedule. For example, once a week. It’s not a good idea to flood your friend with letters. It’s tactless. Anyone needs some personal space and has some business. The subscribers’ time is invaluable. And they won’t want to waste it for removing emails they don’t ready to read (or send them to spam).
As for advertisement, here is the same thing. Advertising is a too aggressive approach. But there is nothing to do without it. We can just dress it in something more interesting or hide. It should be invisible and readable between the rows. You don’t like showing up and obtrusive, don’t you? – So do your friends – they also hate ads.
Give the links to product and landing pages carefully, don’t impose your subscribers the necessity of buying and paying money. Our task is to interest the reader. We should show our product and its advantages, answer all questions our customer could have, ground the usefulness of our product. And only then our client can be confident and ready to buy.
Give Presents
Everybody likes presents. You must admit that it’s always pleasant to get the surprise. And email marketing is a perfect tool for gifting. Sometimes give your customers the discounts and bonuses in the newsletter. Gifts for order motivate people to shop and leave a positive impression. By the way, in this case, your friends feel their exclusivity: a bonus is a priority only for your subscribers and only in your newsletter. You can set up the automated emails with bonuses for some actions and save your time.
Be Friends
“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”
— Albert Camus
A wise person said these words, and they are completely true. Write your emails to no customer or a person who has and influence on your business. Write to your friend. The polite tone of your emails engages people to communicate and trust you. Talk with your reader on the same wavelength and learn to explain your ideas in a friendly way. Don’t sell, but tell, share, and convince. And smile 🙂
Let’s Summarize
How to become friends with your customers and sell more using email marketing?
- Get acquainted and ask for agreement to visit their mailbox;
- Look stylish and beautiful in your newsletters. Modern design of the email template plays an important role;
- Choose interesting but honest subject for your email;
- Specify correct From email address and From name, if you want to communicate with customers;
- Send only useful content and information;
- Communicate friendly, grammatically correct and respectfully;
- Advertise your products carefully. Prove their value, tell more about them;
- Often make pleasant surprises, such as discounts, bonuses, and presents;
- Be interesting and fond of your subscribers’ hobbies;
- Always stay with your readers, even if they buy nothing but open your newsletter – try to find something they need;
- Clean your base regularly – if someone doesn’t open your newsletters during several months, remove this contact. Don’t waste your and his (her) time.
And remember that your Friend is a value. And while you have a friend, give him only qualitative products, useful content, and honest offers.
There were the base principles of the real friendship between a customer and business. Winning the customers’ confidence, we can be friends with them for a very long time, or even forever.
Write interesting letters and make friends!
And a bit later, we’ll talk about how to create such successful emails.