By Maria Elena Duron
While social networks and their content have become an excellent method for improving brand visibility, they aren’t where you want your audience to stay. Rather, consider them as hands reaching out to pull the audience closer to your brand.
These connections must become conversions, specifically through your email. Though it might seem outdated, it is in fact underestimated. Email has proven its worth through the years, improving interaction between brands and their audience by taking those connections and engaging them in a way that can turn a simple “like” into a loyal customer.
Reaching out
When it comes to building email lists, always remember to earn the audience.
Though there are lists you can borrow or accumulate from third-party situations, these aren’t necessarily going to build your brand’s overall image. Earning the audience is the best way to go.
In order to build your email lists, one must start by reaching out. The first place to start is by driving traffic with quality content. Generating blogs (both your own and those where you’re featured as a guest), social outreach, video, and several other word-of-mouth marketing strategies are all effective ways of reaching out. But this is where many strategies neglect the necessary step of using your email as a hub to accumulate and develop these connections.
Through quality content, you create a scenario in which the reader wants you to contact them. The best way to do so is by impressing them with your content, such as offering insights into your brand strategy, how-to’s, and special techniques that set you apart in your business arena.
Other strategies gain impressive results by offering special advantages and conveniences specific to the email audience to entice them. So if you’re wondering how you can earn more subscribers, be sure that you make the email experience a special hub that can service their specific needs.
And that’s what makes email so special. While social networks and blogs are commonly group conversations and interactions, it is possible to become intimate through email interaction. You can address specific and unique situations and give one member of the audience your complete attention.
Timing
Like any form of contact, too much can quickly become annoying and uncomfortable. For the most part, spamming earns you (besides the obvious legal ramifications) a place in the junk-email inbox or an unsubscribed connection. You don’t want either, which brings us to focus on how one should use their email connections effectively.
The first component to effective email is consistency. Timing plays an essential role in keeping the audience pleased with your brand. In most situations, newsletters quarterly or monthly are quite effective in keeping the audience updated on your brand. Of course, special situations (alerts and individual interactions) are perfect for tossing some color into the situation. But the key element here is to establish reliability through a regular connection that doesn’t overwhelm.
The content
Of course, there is also the necessity of quality content. Your email content should be a source of interests, trends, and upcoming events associated with your brand. While social networks might reach out, it is up to the email to convert those connections into loyal brand followers. What do they want to know about you? How specifically do they want to engage your brand? This is your chance to interact intimately with your connections.
Get help, but keep a personal touch
This means that you’re going to need to remain as consistently active as possible, which can be difficult at times. Emails can quickly flow in, many of which cannot always be handled in a timely fashion. Luckily, there are certain tools that make simple, yet vital, interactions easy to maintain. Using the email auto-responder tool will help keep your audience engaged efficiently. You can target particular groups of your mailing lists, allowing you to engage the audience intimately rather than broadly. You can send out appreciation letters to initial subscribers or other valuable material concerning your brand (popular blogs, articles, and news information) to certain groups and lists, saving your brand time and effort that you could invest elsewhere.
Just remember that you still want to add a personal touch to your emails. The one thing about email is that it sometimes appears generated or mass produced, making it slightly impersonal to some. Find time to engage individuals within your email lists and spark social conversations so that the audience can relate to you.
Email has been around for a long time, much longer than social networks, and remains one of the most valuable marketing tools to this day.
While social networks allow you to reach out, it is up to your email to draw them in and discover what it is they truly want from your brand. Through proper technique, you can turn email into the highlight of social interaction, engaging your audience on a more intimate level.
Maria Elena Duron is a connector, trainer and coach. Small Business Owners that work with Maria Elena develop a profitable relationship building system, appeal to their brand advocates, and increase sales. Take the uncertainty out of how your personal and business brand delivers business - Get Your Checklist.
