Many businesses continue to shy away from email marketing because they believe that it’s an outdated approach. But, in actuality, 59% of B2B marketers said that the most effective channel for revenue generation is email. In 2014, email marketing was the most powerful tool for customer retention.
Email newsletters are defined as regular occurring emails that primarily include informational content or a roundup of relevant content piled into one email that users can scroll and read pieces of their choosing. These e-newsletters do not ( or at least shouldn’t) push products. Rather, they hone and create a relationship by engaging in topical and personal information that is relevant to the subscriber.
Other emails that dealerships (or any other business) might go for include:
- Welcome emails, which are triggered when a user agrees and subscribes to receive marketing emails from your dealership.
- Promotional emails, which include special events and/or coupons for upcoming sales events.
- Retention emails, which keep your current customers engaged to ensure that they continue to use your products and/or services.
- Nurture emails, which are a timid email series that trigger once a consumer has shown interest in your brand. They usually just contain additional benefits and/or information for subscribers that aims to ‘close the deal’.
Despite all of that, email newsletters are actually one of the hardest to do right, even with them being one of the most common types of emails that businesses send. This is because newsletters keep your customers’ informed about information, including any updates and advances that your dealership is making, along with how those can be beneficial to them (the consumers). In addition, to sell your brand through content, email newsletters can provide an additional resource to your consumers, sort of like a blog of sorts.
Dealerships can reinforce the perks of your brand, in comparison to their competitors, and utilize your web outlets. In fact, around 70% of consumers said that they would prefer to know about a company through an article rather than an advertisement. Over 80% of consumers stated that they read email on mobile devices.
When you create an email newsletter marketing strategy that is more informative and well-balanced – along with one that contains vehicle software updates, new upcoming models, and specials – there is a higher likelihood that you’ll gain higher open rates, higher clickthrough rates, and lower spam complaints.
There are various reasons as to why your email marketing campaigns should be more newsletter-esque rather than simply service reminders. Here are six of them.
- Effective Email Marketing Can Help To Create Lasting Relationships
A brand that has a strong email marketing strategy has the capability of being something that everyone is excited to see. With the latest information and useful advice, they can draw in individuals through their engaging content. Thus, building trust that enables viewers to look forward to hearing from the brand.
The stories that you tell should matter to your audience. You shouldn’t bombard your audience with emails about everything and ignore whether the topic is even of interest to them. You can’t expect viewers to stay hooked if you don’t listen to them and give them the content that they want.
- Ability To Be Target And Hyper-Personalized
With other marketing channels, such as social media, targeting is often quite granular. Email marketing can be highly targetable and personalized down to an individual user. With the software available today, the data can be analyzed, segmented, and reviewed. You can end with sending emails that address the specific needs of each of the recipients. Customers and prospects appreciate this personal touch and can be pushed to interact more with your brand.
- Keeps Your Brand At The Top Of Your Consumers’ Minds.
When over 34% of Americans checking their emails throughout the day, you can be sure that you’ll link up to your customers and prospects. Your content needs to be where your target audience is spending most of their time. If you have their email addresses, you already know that they are checking regularly enough for you to be there when they are.
Please note, you shouldn’t be sending emails to your customers too frequently that they start to ignore them. But you also don’t want to reach out sporadically that they forget about your brand completely. In order to find balance, you should use event-triggered emails that are automated communications based on the behavior of the prospect. This might help you find the balance and match email frequency with the level of engagement from the engagement.
- Relatively Inexpensive
If you decide to purchase a customer relationship management software or marketing automation (which is recommended), there is a financial investment that is involved. After the first expenditure though, the cost of a message is often less than a penny. With email marketing, you won’t have to worry about postage, print charges (like those for direct mail), or media buys (for TV and radio).
Marketing automation software also reduces the time commitment that is generally associated with email marketing, including time spent maintaining the database, sending, and scheduling. Thus, ensuring that your campaigns are more cost-effective.
- Action-Oriented Emails
Emails generally prompt responses, whether that is by clicking through, forwarding, or replying. When you include clear and direct calls to action (CTA), along with clear benefits, you can take advantage of this and drive traffic to your site. Don’t be afraid to place embed multiple CTAs in your emails.
A common mistake that many marketers make is filling the email with tons of information but only having one call-to-action per email. It’s better if you provide just enough information to entice your audience, but then include links to where they can learn more information. Be sure that you don’t use too many CTAs, as that might be overwhelming to the reader. Aim to keep the number of CTAs in one email to under three.
- Testable And Measurable Marketing
One of the best things about email marketing campaigns is that the objective metrics, including click-through rate, open rate, delivery rate, among others. Using these metrics, marketers can evaluate the performance of their campaigns and adjust accordingly.
Your email newsletters must be interesting, valuable, relevant, and timely.
To make them interesting, you should not let messages clutter the recipients’ inbox. Instead, you should aim to make the newsletter information and entertaining for the recipients to use.
To make them valuable, you should provide information and content that you’re sure would be of value to the reader. If you feel like it won’t be valuable, then your readers will feel the same.
To make them relevant, you have to ensure that the email is pertinent to your readers. You must ensure that the content in the emails speaks to readers unique pain points.
To make it timely, you need to consider the location of the prospects in the buying journey to avoid being too early for their sales pitch, to ensure that you don’t scare them by coming off too strong.
Marketing, regardless of the business’s industry, is one of the fields that the tried and true methods continue to work and ‘newer’ doesn’t always mean the best choice. If you’re not sure what things your readers and/or consumers want to see, then it might help to have a poll within an email that helps you gauge how the readers feel about your content. You could also offer an incentive to ensure that they participate, such as a raffle or giveaway.
References: PR Newswire, SlideShare, Hubspot, Business Insider
