Contrary to popular belief, people do like to receive promotional emails. In fact, 96% of US adults earning $75,000 – $99,900 would like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with.
Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing campaigns and if done right, this will make you a marketing superstar and can dramatically increase both brand awareness and sales.
Here are some useful tips on how to implement your Email Marketing campaigns effectively:
- Email only the people you know.
Start with people who you already do business with. People you have already interacted with before, even only once, are less likely to delete, ignore, or mark your email as spam. You can start contacting people from your account on:
- Linkedin. Linkedin is a B2B platform and contacts from here are probably the most valuable of all. Easily get your contacts’ email addresses by following these steps:
- Click on “Connections” under My Network tab.
- Click on the settings button (cogwheel) on the right
- On the right panel, you’ll see an option to export your contacts.
- Facebook. Export email addresses of your Facebook contacts. No app will let you do this but we discovered a trick and it’s totally legal.
- Visit address.yahoo.com.
- Click the Facebook icon and sign in with your Facebook login details.
- The email addresses of your Facebook friends will automatically be added onto your Yahoo Address Book and you can export them and add to your company’s email database.
- Here’s a video how-to.
- Know the right frequency.
One of the most common mistakes insurance agents or agencies do is sending emails too often or too infrequently. Instead of bombarding your clients once or twice a week, why don’t you pick the most important information and deliver it to them in one or two emails per month? Sending out relevant information with acceptable frequency will make your clients think and feel you are credible and a person of authority. However, sending out too many emails may be viewed as junk while you will be missing the boat if you are not sending at the minimum acceptable frequency.
- Personalize your e-newsletter according to their needs.
Make sure your contact list if properly segmented so you don’t end up sending irrelevant email to your prospective clients. Categorize them according to your products (e.g. Personal lines, Commercial Lines, etc). How can someone say no to a product they need? All you have to do is to send the right information to the right person. - Timing is everything.
A lot has been written about the perfect time to send e-newsletters and to be frank, you will have to figure out what works best for you. It varies from industry to industry. Our team has tried sending them at different hours, on different days, and we suggest that you try sending yours anytime during the work week except on Fridays when everyone is busy finishing off important tasks. Sending an e-newsletter on a busy day will leave your email unopened, worse it will go straight to trash or spam box.
Like any other business, start with people you know and if you do great service, your reputation will grow and you will get more referrals in time.