Let’s face it; very few businesses get it right when it comes to email marketing in Spartanburg. Either they completely overstep their bounds by filling their users’ inbox with non-stop advertising, or they simply send a message or two per year and hope for the best. Neither method actually produces results though because that’s not what the consumer signed up for.
Take Papa John’s Pizza, for example. Some of their promotions, like earning a free pizza for placing an order during major sporting events, are fantastic ideas that drastically boost their sales on big party occasions. So you know they have some smart marketers in place within their corporate offices.
Why then do they email their entire lists with “specials” 8-12 times per week when the offer is actually regular menu price? It makes absolutely no sense since they’re finding their way to spam folders and alienating their customer base more and more every single day.
Learn to Build Actual Relationships
The main thing Papa Johns (and everyone else) does wrong is forgetting that email is supposed to be about building genuine relationships. That can’t happen if your marketing department doesn’t have respect for their customers though, because people see straight through false promises and gimmicks these days. The average person receives over 250 emails per address, per day, so we’ve become very good in a very short period of time when it comes to spotting spam.
Here’s the amazing thing though- companies who respect their customers and use email to build stronger relationships actually see five to ten times the average return on each campaign. And they gain up to ten times the conversions with only a handful of total messages sent out each month…which completely goes against the way big business handles email.
So instead of trying to sell something, message your customers only when you have something of value to tell them. They will respect you for it a whole lot more and it is the only way to create lifelong customers that are always willing to listen.
Properly Manage your Email Lists
Another thing that completely boggles my mind is how large corporations violate their own privacy policies without giving it a second thought. For example, you’ve probably come across several websites recently that had a banner offering a free eBook download in exchange for you sharing your email address. And honestly, this is a great way to generate potential leads…and it’s also a great way to chase potential leads away.
Case and point- a local Spartanburg insurance company (that I’m not going to call out directly) offers a free PDF download to teach potential clients about deductibles and other things they should consider before choosing a home insurance policy. Just in the past week, however, they’ve emailed me about RV insurance (I don’t have an RV), motorcycle insurance (I don’t have one of those either), an upcoming agent conference (I’m not a licensed agent) and three other messages that had absolutely nothing to do with me.
Now, if this company really wanted me to use them for home insurance, wouldn’t it make a heck of a lot more sense for them to only contact me about that one service? But they can’t do that because their email lists are all clumped together into one generic category. In other words, they have no idea who I am or why they’re emailing me in the first place…but they just keep on messaging anyway.
To avoid this common problem, you absolutely must sort your email lists based on each lead’s initial interests. The more specific your messaging is to their needs, the more your campaigns will convert and produce favorable results.
When You Sell, Offer an Unbeatable Value
Let’s talk about Papa John’s one more time- specifically, all those “specials” they send me as a trusted customer. I’ve always wondered; do they really think that Americans are so unbelievably stupid that they wouldn’t glance at the actual online menus to see that they’re not being offered a deal? And once we realize that we’ve been lied to, do they really still expect us to order from them that day anyway?
As my twelve year old likes to say, “Heck to the no-no.”
Here’s the almost laughable thing that happens though; when consumers see an offer that initially interests them, it creates a genuine desire to buy. If the messaging is not genuine though, then that initial interest will push them straight to a competitor’s doorstep. And in Papa John’s case, there’s no telling how many pies they inadvertently sell for Pizza Hut, Dominos and all the independent franchises.
So the point here is that if you’re going to make a sales pitch through email, then it better be a genuinely good offer that the consumer doesn’t have to think too hard about. Because if there’s even the faintest hint of doubt within that messaging, then you’re actually marketing for your competitors instead.