Digital marketing has many elements but one which is cost-effective and viable for SMEs to pursue is e-mail marketing. E-mails are important in converting clicks into clients. By having a good CRM and email strategy, you can walk your customer through the capture, nurture, wow cycle with ease and get good results from your efforts.
Let’s take look at eight questions around CRMs and email strategies that was highlighted in a recent interview with Pine3Marketing’s CEO Ines Rosef Ingram.
1. What is a CRM?
CRM might sound like a crazy acronym, but it stands for customer relationship management. This software helps you to have a good overview of your customers. It can help you to know who your customer is, what are their contact details, where did they connect with your brand, and how have you communicated with them in the past. Without having a good CRM in place, you may be looking in excel spreadsheets and email inboxes to gather the information you need to make a sale. With a CRM in place, information from your client is quick to access and, in turn, makes it easier for you to make decisions about your clients.
2. Why are CRMs vital to SMEs?
With CRMs, you can easily organise your customers’ information and you will save time. With the information which you can get from a CRM that has been set up well, you can make better and quicker decisions around your business.
3. Why is it imperative for SMEs to have an e-mail marketing strategy?
Firstly, email marketing can be a fairly cheap channel to communicate with your customers. By starting small, you can improve the customer service and engagement you experience by using e-mail as part of your marketing strategy.
4. How do I start an effective email campaign?
When starting your first email campaign, consider what your customer wants to hear. Make sure the information you share with your customer is relevant to them. When you have written your email then you need to find an email tool. These can range from tools that only focus on email to ones that are integrated with CRMs, marketing, and sales tools.
5. How to choose a tool to use for email marketing?
There are three questions to consider when looking at all the tools available for email marketing. They are:
- What is your business goal with the tool? Here you need to look at the tool’s ability to segment email lists, do a/b testing, and the number of emails you can send.
- Do they comply with the latest protection of personal information rules? Most tools will have most of the necessary compliance factors in place, like having an obligatory unsubscribe button at the bottom of an email.
- How is the pricing structured? Many tools may offer a free version. These versions will give you a taste of what the tool can do but if you want to use all the bells and whistles of the tool it might become expensive. Therefore, look at the pricing structure and consider what you will need in the future before you choose a tool. If they offer a trial, use it and ask questions so that you can be sure you are investing in the right tool for your business.
Some tools you can use are Keap, MailChimp, and HubSpot.
6. How do I not irritate my customer with emails?
Many emails go straight into the virtual dustbin because customers are not happy with the content they are receiving. How can you stop this from happening?
- Don’t send e-mails that people don’t want to receive. Make sure the information you send via email is relevant to your customer and current. By using your CRM, you can understand what your customer likes to hear about and tailor your emails to speak to the problem and help them to resolve it. You can also segment your email list into the different types of clients who you serve.
- Don’t talk about yourself. You may have the most interesting life story but unless it is relevant to my problem don’t tell me about it. I want to know how your solution can solve my problem. Why are you in business? Yes, I know to make money but what other reason? Are you trying to ease my financial burden by offering great savings options or are you helping me improve my health by sending me good recipes? Talk to your customer’s challenges and offer your customers solutions for them.
7. How can I prevent my email from ending in the spam folder?
Email deliverability has many facets but two elements you need to think about are who are you using to send your emails and who is your customer using to receive your emails. Normally the tool you are using to send the email has ensured that there is a good chance of your email being delivered. As for the system receiving your email, they will be looking at:
- Does your domain have a good reputation? Are your emails read or sent straight to the bin when they come in?
- How many pictures, links and HTML pieces do you have in the email?
- Is your email mobile-friendly?
These are all areas that can affect the deliverability of your email.
8. How does CRMs and email marketing help increase my sales?
This question is often asked but is sometimes difficult to answer because of all the moving pieces involved in digital marketing. Email marketing can be used throughout the client’s life cycle in your business. You can send emails to confirm you have captured your clients’ details correctly. You can send tailored emails to different segments of your list. You can thank your customer for wanting to and attending a webinar or workshop. You can use email to request a meeting. By having a good email strategy in place, you can work towards turning those clicks into paying customers.
What the full webinar here:
We hope the answers to these questions have shown how you can use an email strategy to boost your business.
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