Email Marketing

Developing Relationships…Through Email?

The use of email is changing the way businesses communicate with their customers. Rather than using email solely to offer products for sale, many businesses now use it to communicate helpful information to shoppers who request it. This helpful information creates a relationship with a shopper who can, in time, turn into a customer.

Say, for example, your business sells TV’s online. Consider placing a “request more information” link beside each of product. To supply this information, you could compose an email in advance and automatically send the information when a shopper requests it. Once you’ve written and formatted the email, it requires no more of your time, and most importantly, the cost of sending it is close to free. Customers want more value from companies and you can provide this easily. Say that you have a website that sells cookware and kitchen supplies, send recipes to customers requesting more information, rather than just sending notices of sales. Useful information to your potential customers is huge and will benefit you more than sending unwanted information such as new inventory items.

To continue building relationships with your customers, you must ask permission to send email and give them the opportunity to opt out of it.. Ecommerce businesses can get 50 percent of their total revenue stemming from email marketing, but it’s marketing that is sent only to customers who want it and are interested in the products and services. Be sure to send out the email quickly once a potential customer asks for the information because a customer’s interest will fade if they do not hear from you within a timely manner.

Companies must focus on building better relationships with their customers and use email to communicate with customers so they’ll continue buying products. It’s the long-term relationship that’s important, and not just selling a single product and never hearing from a customer again.

Roughly 95 percent of the visitors to an ecommerce site typically do not purchase anything, therefore any opportunity you can give a visitor useful information or even free information, you are building those relationships. Just because the visitor does not buy something from you, this does not mean they don’t want to hear from you, eventually they may become a customer and this can all be accomplished through email.

To attract a visitor to sign-up for an email, your site should request only a minimum commitment from them, such as signing up for a single product information request rather than signing up for a recurring, monthly email newsletter.

A few last things, don’t send out too many emails, don’t send out promotions with 30 different products in the email. Keep your emails simple and concise. Get the customer to your site, and they will find your products. Don’t force the relationship.