When Your Customers Need to Know More: Fill Them in With an Email Blast

Email Marketing can be a very important part of your Business or Organization’s (Social Media) Marketing Mix.  According to this week’s lecture in my Social Media for Business Class - sending out emails can fill in the gaps where your other social media efforts might miss. It can drive online (as well as off) traffic to your web content, and inform them about your business’s products and services, relevant news, goals and other types of events.  

According my class professor’s notes, consumers who receive email marketing (opt in) spend about “83 percent more while shopping” than customers who do not receive any email marketing announcements at all. On average their sales orders are larger by about 44 percent, and they will place orders 28 percent more often than the traditional shopper does.   The average return on a business’s email marketing efforts is about $44.25 in sales per every dollar spent. Seventy two percent of business marketers think that email engagement and advertising makes a good value with their return on (marketing & promotions) investments.  

There are many email platforms (software sites) online that will provide mass email marketing tools, as well as analytics and information for monitoring your results. They can vary in prices and functionality with their services, from the simple and free, to more complex and expensive, depending on your business’s needs and size (contact lists). 

Many of them will provide email (newsletter) design tools (templates) for better aesthetics and functionality – making your emails more appealing to your customers. The more professional you can look with your branding (newsletter - emails), the more responses for your email marketing efforts you will most likely get.  

With your emails you can create Calls to Action to visit your web pages (landing pages) online or your social media pages such as Facebook and Twitter (or others). You can invite them to join as followers or tweet about your business, news and other events. You can promote sales opportunities, offer promotions, and advertise events; or even just remind them of your online presence when things are getting slow and not much is going on at the moment. 

It is an excellent tool for building relationships with your customers. You can invite them to join your lists online or off (with post cards or registries) at trade shows, business events, or your brick and mortar locations (such as when their at your sales desk).  

These newsletters can be sent out semiannually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, or even daily depending on your business needs and customer’s receptiveness. Be sure to offer them easy to find opt-out opportunities, and be careful of privacy and spamming your consumers; you do not want to appear unprofessional or anger people who are not interested. 

Turnover and churn are a part of the business cycle, so let those customers who aren’t interested go, and you will keep your brand stronger in their minds as being respectful and conscience of their security. This might help you woo them back in the future when the timing is more relevant to their needs.  

My assignment for his week was to think about my consumers for the Sabrina Keller Foundation and what type of newsletter would I choose for the organization. Should it be sent daily, weekly or monthly or perhaps quarterly is more appropriate?

  

As of now the Sabrina Keller Foundations has sent out an informal email message when there is an upcoming event for a fundraiser or family dine-out which is usually about 4 to 8 times a year. The rest of the year Facebook is the most often website – or marketing strategy for consumer engagement.

I would propose The Sabrina Keller Foundations organize a Bi-monthly schedule for a newsletter that would talk about several topics including upcoming events such as our “dine outs” – which are held at local participating restaurants like Panda Express or Applebee’s.

Other topics of interest to engage our subscribers would be the Girl Scouts activities and events they may have in the local area. We could highlight individual girl scouts with their member awards and other community projects they may be working on. 

The Keller Foundations also holds family events, such as bowling nights or horseshoe games/picnics - that we can promote in the newsletter - as well as highlight them (pictures/activities/awards/fund raising statistics etc.) afterwards.

Educational Articles about the SADS and the SADS Foundations could be reprinted in the newsletter, as well as highlight those families struggling with the disease; either from the loss of a child or of those families who are coping with a related SADS illness. Perhaps we could place recipes for hearth healthy cooking or an article on how to have every day family fun – such as from a reprint a Family oriented magazine – article. 

I think these topics would all be relevant to the Sabrina Keller Target consumer, who are generally woman between the ages of 25 – 65; who are parents- mostly mothers of children and adolescent-teens.