Email marketing is definitely on the agenda when planning the company's marketing actions, both old and new. Newsletters are already familiar to many companies, but have different stakeholders been taken into account in communications?
Often it's a question of resources. A newsletter is just one of many marketing tasks and there isn't always time to separate communication to different target groups. However, modern newsletter tools offer an array of handy features that help you in targeting and segmenting your messages while saving time and resources. In the following text we present different target groups and good reasons to put an effort into these recipients.
Owners and employees
Often communication to the home base is left unattended. With an internal newsletter you can quickly and efficiently keep the members of your own organization aware of current affairs and spread the company culture. Depending on the company, the content can be entertaining, useful, official, guiding – you know your recipients the best. You can also take advantage of an RSS feed that enables you to bring the latest newsletters to the company's intranet and other internal communication channels.
Customers
Your existing customers are - in addition to the current cash flow - a very important channel for upselling. However, the acquisition of new customers often leaves them neglected. A frequent newsletter is a good way to let your customers know how you're doing and keep your company fresh on their minds. Also, don't forget different kinds of upsell and cross-sell campaigns, invitations and wishes. In addition to personal communication you can nurture customer relationships with email marketing.
Existing customer data can be put into good use with marketing automation by taking advantage of the information that the company has already gathered of its customers. This offers whole new possibilities for making customers committed, as well as making communications timely and targeted correctly. For example, you can run an automated customer campaign, remind passive buyers, introduce a new product or possibly say goodbye with an elegant letter and feedback survey. Read more about using existing customer data here.
Top 100 customers
The group of key accounts should be approached on a personal level as well. You can improve personal communications with email marketing and closely follow your customers' reactions in the newsletter reports. You are able to enrich already gathered customer data and serve this important target group better than before. Measurability is one of the greatest advantages of digital marketing – you can rank, understand and build trust among your customers with frequent customer communications and systematic measuring. Online and offline marketing actions don't have to exist far apart. Instead they should work supporting one another.
Prospects, potential buyers
Email marketing is an excellent tool for generating and nurturing leads for sales. By making use of the detailed report data you can make your sales more efficient and gain great savings in costs. By introducing what your company has to offer to your prospects in advance, you also make ”cold calling” easier for your sales team since they don't have to start from scratch.
Planning your message is especially important when targeting potential clients. This is because the recipients don't necessarily have a strong bond to your company yet. In the optimal situation the potential buyer has willingly subscribed to your newsletter after being intrigued by your content or services. In any case you have to convince the new subscribers and meet their expectations. Make an effort with the heading, sender info, appearance of the letter and content. With marketing automation you can also target communications better and direct potential customers towards a purchase.
Partners
Your partners and subcontractors should also be kept informed about your operations. There isn't always time to make calls but with a newsletter you can stay on their minds even during the busiest times. Try a more personal approach in newsletters from time to time and send the letter with the CEO's name and picture attached as opposed to the usual general info. How about adding a personal greeting or a video greeting?
The public
Some surprising groups of people might be interested in your company's affairs and products. It's not wise to be passive, especially when getting in touch with these groups and gathering emails doesn't require that much from you. It's sufficient that you enable the contact: put an automated form on your front page and gather contacts from trade fairs and seminars. If a newsletter is an important means of communication to you and you want to put effort into growing your email list, make use of other ways of gathering subscribers. For example, the following groups might be interested in your company: the family and relatives of your employees, competitors, prospects, the people in your county and town, students, media representatives, job seekers, sales representatives. Email marketing is a cost-effective and secure way to keep your stakeholders in the loop.
Media representatives
Digital marketing is an affective way to keep media representatives aware of your actions. By following reports you also know who is interested in what you do and you can target your pursuits regarding this group. A specialized service should be used for press release distribution – this way you won't have to manage your own database of media and journalist contacts and you can just focus on the content of the press releases.
Personalize and target your message
Because there are different needs between recipient groups, this should be taken into consideration in planning and implementing communications. It pays off to create recipient lists and plan the contents accordingly. You don't always have to reinvent the wheel and the same content can be used for different recipients with small adjustments. To make your job easier you can add segmented content blocks to you newsletter templates when the system automatically shows the chosen content based on the recipient's attributes.
Personalizing the header with the recipient's name is a nice personal touch.
Are you interested in developing your email marketing? Contact our team and we'll tell you more about the successful newsletter tool LianaMailer.
