There are many negative effects of the pandemic, many. But today I want to talk about one that especially affects local commerce and some strategies that have helped and can continue to help them get out of this crisis. Something so simple and so effective that if you look at it closely, it is hard to believe that it is not used more; I’m talking about email marketing.
And more specifically, simple , direct email marketing , without all those complications that we often see on the Internet. I’ll explain it to you a little later.
You’ve probably heard that email is dead. Every year, marketing gurus “kill” some channel. SEO and email marketing take the cake. There is not a year that one of the two does not die. But nevertheless, invariably, they are the two channels that work best for me in all my projects .
But of course, it has to be done well. It’s not worth doing it any way.
Today I will talk about email marketing and especially some strategies to obtain good results for local businesses.
A great advantage of Email marketing for physical businesses
I’m going to give you 8 advantages of using a good, simple email marketing strategy . There are many, but I want to mention these 8 and then I will highlight one of them that seems key to me today.
These are some that I have personally experienced and find fundamental:
- It’s a great way to do direct response marketing . That is, if I do things well I can expect sales as a result of my emails.
- It is a magnificent two-way communication channel because you can provide the opportunity for response, opinion or exchange of information.
- It gives you the possibility of sharing valuable information with your users.
- If you do it well, you can also entertain your list , which has great advantages. There is no reason to always be the smartest, nor the one who knows the most. Sometimes entertaining your audience is more than enough to get sales.
- Build loyalty among your customers because you are in communication with them, they do not forget about you, they have you in their subconscious for when the time of purchase arrives.
- It is a great channel to publicize news , changes, improvements that will surely be for your own benefit.
- Not everyone is on social networks but everyone has an email . In fact, to register on a social network, you need an email. So they have it from 16-year-olds to people 70 or older.
- We check our email frequently and we carry it on our mobile phone .
They are all important. I have verified all of them throughout all these years, in different projects and sectors. But there is one that seems key to me and that the coronavirus pandemic has made clear:
The great advantage of maintaining contact with your client even if your physical business is closed.
Maintaining contact with your customer even if a certain amount of time passes without coming to your premises is the key to loyalty.
Sometimes it happens that a client stops coming to our store for whatever reason. Because he doesn’t catch you passing by, because he has found another store and wants to try it (and he doesn’t buy from you), because he has found a product on sale somewhere else,… there are hundreds of reasons.
And one more.
Since I started talking about the pandemic, what happens to a physical business when it has to close its doors for a while?
Nobody enters. But nobody, nobody.
What happens to those clients?
Two things.
Either they go to buy online or wait for you to open again. What happens if it takes weeks to reopen?
Most likely, your customers will get tired and go shopping online, on Amazon, or similar.
Is it possible to do something?
Of course. Maintain frequent contact.
The contact, of course. On social networks, right?
Well no. Unless you pay for ads, because you already know that organic reach is very, very limited.
And something free that allows me to maintain that contact?
Yes, of course, the email.
Clear.
But for that you need to build a mailing list , a list of people who leave you their email because what you can later send them has value for them. That is not easy. But a good email marketing strategy doesn’t start when you send your first email, it starts by creating your database.
And how do you get that?
I’ll explain.
How to create the email marketing strategy for your local business
Imagine that your physical business is a beauty center, a dentist, a shoe store or a veterinary clinic. Does not matter.
Because if you have clients you have several interesting points:
- You offer something that people are willing to pay for . Whether it is a product, a service or knowledge (academies).
- You can get valuable information . Since you have clients (because if not, you would have closed already) you can know their tastes, they will tell you things related to the business, what worries them, what scares them, what they like, what they need, what they miss, what works for them. And what not… a lot of information that you can extract from opinions that most of the time you don’t even need to ask for.
- You have a thousand and one “excuses” or reasons to ask them for their email address and none of them is to tell them: “so I can send you promotions and discounts that will interest you, you’ll see.” You can give better arguments, such as notifying them of the next massage session, the dog’s vaccination, your child’s English certificate exams, interesting information about the sector… there are many ways and reasons to request the email.
Nowadays, most tools already incorporate this part, some in a simpler and more intuitive way and others less so.
A simple and very usable example is, for example, easymailing.com .
In two clicks you have the GDPR theme configured for your project.
Returning to the topic of the email marketing strategy that will help you build a solid channel to improve communication with your customer, increase loyalty and improve sales .
Let’s go step by step:
Step #1:- Think about why someone is going to leave you their email.
This will depend a lot on the type of physical business you have. Let’s assume a veterinary center.
You can request the email to send reminders about vaccines, antiparasitics, tick season, to send information about animal care or new products.
Did you say send a lot of emails about coupons and discounts?
No. I said informative emails and of course sales emails as well. But not in any way, I will explain it to you later.
And if I have a beauty center or I am a dentist, can I also?
Yes you can too. There is always information, create a PDF guide, articles, news, opinions, discounts or whatever you can offer in exchange for that email.
I already have the email, now what?
I send my offers, right?
Well no.
Now you build that trust that I told you before because if not, your emails will not be opened, they will go to the trash and even to spam.
Step #2:- Build trust.
It is a key point and most of the time it is wasted and very poorly done. With all the information we see on the Internet, we think that email marketing is funnels, automated shipments while I only hear the “clin, clin” noise of the checkout billing.
The thing doesn’t work like that.
Can you imagine that you meet a person for the first time and instead of talking to them you take a series of phrases recorded on a tape recorder, hoping to respond to their comments, doubts and answers?
Absurd, right?
Well, the same with email. We want the easy way, which does not cost work but we want it to generate many benefits for us. The thing doesn’t work like that.
Building trust involves sending meaningful emails, with genuine information or entertainment … and links to sales. Clear. We are here to sell, not to pretend for 15 days that we are very nice and on the 16th say that we sell something.
It is sold from the beginning, but with subtlety, making it clear what is there, but without aggressiveness or making your email look like Piccadilly with its neons and strident colors.
My recommendation is to send emails in personal format. Like writing to a friend. Of course, many times and depending on the sector, the business and the style, more striking emails, with more design, fit, but not always.
There are a lot of templates available, from those with more design, to those that are more personal and look like an email from one friend to another:
A personal email fits with all businesses , with all tastes and little by little you evolve until you find your style. But also emails with more design, photos and colors work very well for fashion businesses, photography, designers, products, etc.
In my case, I send emails very frequently, several a week. You can see an example of an email from me here and subscribe to my newsletter at the end of the post 😉
Is this an aggressive way of asking for your email?
I don’t think so, if that email example seems interesting to you, if my PDFs seem interesting to you, why don’t you leave your email?
If that’s what the dozens of people who register a day think about my website, think that the same thing happens with yours.
Step #3:- Frequency of sending emails.
It is an important point and one that I am frequently asked. I’ll tell you that I’ve tried everything. I have worked on projects that lend themselves to a higher frequency and others where it is simply more difficult to maintain a high sending frequency.
But invariably, the more frequent emails (well constructed), the more trust and more sales.
One of the biggest fears when sending emails is being “boring” and that people will be deleted from our list.
The secret is always to entertain. Offer content that the user wants to open and generally involves entertaining content, anecdotes, practical cases, real examples and at the end always a link for sale. Without fear, without complexes.
You have to sell and that’s why we do all this. It must be made clear from the beginning.
Step #4:- If I try to sell in my emails I will have more unsubscribes.
Could be. But we’re not here to have the biggest subscriber list. We are here because we want to enhance our business. Boost sales and the only way is by selling. Do it well, but sell.
And if there are drops in your list, no problem, that keeps your list healthy, with contacts who are really interested in your business and not with zombie users who do not open your emails and therefore will never buy from you.
Additionally, the larger the list, the higher the costs of your email marketing tool.
To give you an idea of a simple and cheap tool, I leave you the Easymailing price list that I mentioned before:
We don’t want people on our list who aren’t interested in what we ship, our business, or our products. The more subscribers, the higher the cost , which is why it is key to have a healthy list.
NOTE: Offering coupons sometimes has its risk and people who only chase the coupon enter your list.
Of my options for building a list, offering coupons is at the bottom. There are other much better options that I have already mentioned before.
That said, you build your list to sell, in all my emails I always enter a sales link, in all my projects, in all of my clients’.
Do I have more casualties because of that?
No. I have more cancellations if I bore them, if I don’t send interesting emails. That’s the secret, you can sell or not, but you can’t bore.
I hope these tips help your local business try email marketing. There are many tools out there, but for simple projects, without funnels, without complex automation, I opt for simple tools, with a very fast learning curve and that you can put to work quickly.
