3 Types of Attention-Grabbing Marketing Emails to Help You Connect With Customers
In 2015, there were 205 billion emails sent and received per day. It’s a large number to wrap your head around, but it tells us two things. First, email is definitely not going anywhere anytime soon. And second, getting your customers’ attention in their inboxes will continue to be a challenge.
It also reminds us that, as marketers, we are ultimately in the business of creating attention. We want to grab customers’ attention, hold on to it, and then effectively repeat this cycle for new prospects. Thankfully, email continues to be a successful channel to help build and sustain those strong connections.
As an email marketer, here are the three types of marketing emails you should be setting up to help strengthen your brand:
#1: The Survey Email
The survey email is how you learn more about who your audience is and what their perceptions and opinions of your brand are. You want to learn the most important details without overdoing it. No one has the time to fill out a 50 (or even 10) question survey.
So how do you decide what to ask? Imagine your entire customer base is sitting in front of you in a conference hall or stadium. If you had the chance to ask them just one question, what would it be? Think this over and make sure this one-question survey sparks responses to help you better manage your brand or business.
The other survey type to consider would be the Net Promoter Score (NPS). The NPS asks people how likely they are to recommend your brand to others on a scale of 1-10 and then categorizes these answers into three different groups. People who give you a 9 or 10 are considered promoters; a score of 7 or 8 classifies a customer as a passive, while a customer with a 0 to 6 score is considered a detractor.
Your NPS is then calculated by taking the number of detractors and subtracting it from the number of promoters. Schedule an email with an NPS survey to be sent out quarterly and use the data to feed your monthly content calendar and email frequency. For easy ways to send friendly email surveys, check out platforms like Delighted and Ask Nicely.
#2: The 'Surprise and Delight' Email
Recognizing your customers in ways that are unexpected (surprise) and provide value (delight) can go miles in terms of becoming a favorite or "must-read" email in an inbox.
In addition to knowing which customers are promoters or detractors, data tied to when they joined as a customer or subscriber, product usage thresholds, and customer actions can be used as fuel for some of your best surprise and delight emails. There’s the option of the “thanks for being a customer for one year” email or the “since you did that, you’ll love this” email. You could also try the “you’re almost there/encouragement to surpass a milestone” email.
Any email that can create a positive, emotional reaction will only support your quest for grabbing attention and strengthening your brand. For certain customer actions or milestones, these emails should be automated with the help of your email marketing provider. For the other “just because/thank you for being a customer” emails and newsletters, send at least one every month.
#3: The Curated Content Email
The curated content email let’s you share more of what you love as a brand. And it’s a great way to help build authenticity outside of social media. This email could be weekly or monthly and is a quick and easy way to combine images, articles, and other pieces of interesting or helpful information that you think are relevant to your audience.
Your curated content could be about influential people, businesses, events, or resources. And while these emails are great fodder for your audience’s passions, they will also help you cut down the time it takes to actually create an email full of original content. As long as you give credit where credit is due, sharing great ideas you’ve found from other relevant sources is a great way to strengthen your brand with your customers.
For an even easier way to handle curated content emails, Curate is a new mobile app that automatically formats your curated content into a beautiful email newsletter that you can send right from your mobile or tablet.
Now What?
Commit to trying at least one of these three emails in the next 90 days. And if you're already sending surveys and curated content emails to your audience? Congrats on being ahead of the game!
