While email
marketing can boost sales effectively, it is challenging to get people open
emails, appeal to call-to-action, and make purchase decisions.
Among thousands
of emails that users get every day, how to make your emails stand out is a task
that requires a lot of effort in understanding your customers. People can ignore,
mark as spam, delete, or click on your emails.
Suppose you
get a click, having users scroll down and read through your emails in just a
few seconds, and click on your products sales is the next task that requires relevant
and appealing content.
You can see
that email marketing if is done appropriately, there are conversions waiting
ahead. Nevertheless, email marketing is not that easy. How many opened emails do
you have? How many clicks or sign-ups do you have? How many people who really
buy your products?
If you are
trying to massively sell, people will stay away from you. Instead, having
personas in your email marketing. When users have a personal connection to your
products, they are likely to spend their precious time to click on your emails,
read and ultimately buy something.
Every single
step in your campaign from having mailing list to creating subject lines and
content needs the presence of personas of your customers. Here are the tips to
build personas in your email marketing.
Have mail list capture
This is a
basic tool on your websites. When a customer buys your products, your site must
contain customer information before they can check out. If he permits you to
send future sales by emails, you must put him in the mail list. If there is no
purchase, make sure your customers sign up for your emails.
Email sign-up incentives
People know
that when they sign up, they will receive your emails regularly. If it occupies
one more spot in their inbox, you need to give them reasons why they should get
emails from you. It can be free gifts, e-books or online webinar.
Have personas template
It is to answer who your customer is, what are his demographics, what goals and challenges he has, what he values and how your product can solve his problems. Buffer has framed an easy-to-follow template and demonstrated an example. You can also download free persona template from Hubspot.
Obtain personas information
The more detail personas you have, the better segments you can target. You can group people with similar demographics, behaviors, psychological and geographic segmentation. It is not only the task of marketing department but also the involvement of the entire personnel. Sources are focused on but not limited to your site analytics, interactions with customers in person and on social media, surveys and interviews.
References
Digital Marketing Essentials (Larson & Draper). Chapter 8:
Email Marketing
How much data about your customers do you think you have? Are
you aware of trust crisis happening in the past few years with Facebook
scandals and other online platforms? It is urgent that customers have begun to
distrust online advertising because their data is rapidly spread by unauthorized
parties with unexpected purposes. As a marketer, you need to perceive the ethical
role of marketing and advertising in this modern time when technology if not
being used properly can be harmful to our customers.
There is any evident proof to conclude that current model of online advertising is dangerous for the society. In the scale of 5, I would give a score of 3 as moderately dangerous for following reasons. First, most people are paying attention on their personal privacy for any online activities. If you follow the case of Facebook in the past year, you properly know that Facebook has been encountered privacy issues when data of Facebook users were used for political campaigns through unauthorized third parties. Because of this, people are afraid of giving their information to online advertisers through thousands of online channels.
Second, information can be stored with cookies and algorithms, and online advertisers has been taking advantage of that very well. It sounds like a joke when Jaron addressed in his TedTalk that advertising and social networks are not intrinsic themselves anymore, but behavior modification instead. It is true! Today your go online and buy a watch, then tomorrow the very first thing showing in your search engines or any sites you go to is watch advertisings – exactly the same style and color, plus coupon and promotion codes. What a good deal! Now are you thankful for that, with the deal keeps following you wherever you browse even? Well, this can be very personal as we are different. Nevertheless, if you stand in the shoes of your customers, you need to change or else they will leave you one day as they do not trust you anymore.
It is time to stop trust crisis from online advertising and
deal with it. A truly marketer must truly have lifetime relationship with her
customers through true value and privacy respect. This will help you stand out
against the trust crisis and keep your customers being loyal and intrigued to know
more about your products. Business is about making money, yet a sustainable
business has its ethic responsibility towards its only source of surviving–customers.
Having said that, here are codes of ethics for digital markets to avoid
distrust and gain trust from customers.
Have democracy–it’s not politics, its striven duty
There is nothing to do with politics here. Everyone
likes to live in liberal condition where their desire is met and free of any
dictation. But, desires of a business owner and customers are different. So,
make sure you give your customers democracy, not for your business. If someone
says business is devil, then it is up to you to counter him that you delivery democracy
desire for people.
Be patient in building love
Jaron is right when he said building love is long and ruining love is short. And yet making money easily can ruin love. You want to walk with your customers long and long, then remember to be patient. You can not be patient if you do not have love, so it matters that you want to take your love to give love, or you do want to give love to ruin love. It is your relationship with your customers, do not lose it!
Spend your budget on credibility
Being a profession marketer, you must know
credibility is important to refer to your customers. It can be a trustworthy spokesperson
or writer. It can be the trustworthy content itself. It can also be long
history of having good feedback from customers. Whatever it is, keep building
your credibility is a key to keep you mindful about what is right or wrong and
genuine in what campaign you are doing.
Genuine motive
Having a genuine motive is important to
stick yourself to be customers-centered. You are driven by helping people and
delivering true value for people, that is why your business was founded. Whenever
you get stuck, do not forget to ask yourself a question of what reason it was
that you started your business. Time flies, but it is never too late to be right.
Profit striven but be human beings
This is related to democracy but in an upper
level. Psychologically, you want to treat people the same way you want them to treat
you. So, if you do not protect your customers from the threat of privacy
issues, your customers may sue you. That sounds serious but do not let your business
in that situation ever. You are also human beings, so love people as you love
yourself.
Control your retargeting/remarketing
With the support of cookies, you are of course
able to retarget your customers whenever they go online. But because of above
mentioned codes, remember to control your activity by employing frequency caps.
It is simple and easy to do, so do not let your customers leave you for
obsessively repeating advertising.
Inspire your team to be ethical
Only you being aware of privacy issue is not enough; involve your team! Inspire them the role of ethic marketing. One change is weak, but together your team can create a healthy, safety and sustainable online environment for your customers.
Communicate with your entire company
Has your CEO understood the consequence of trust crisis and the role of ethic marketing? Has your entire company perceived the long-term value of sustainable relationship with its customers? Tell them, inspire them and change them. You can do that because you are a truly ethical marketer!
