Comprehensive Internet marketing during a crisis (and beyond) is suitable for everyone.
Integrated Internet marketing has long been one of the most effective forms of communication a marketer can use. The latest report from Hubspot shows that this channel has the third highest ROI. It is not surprising that during the crisis, many people turned to integrated Internet marketing.
Those who invested in it earlier began to focus more on it and strengthen their activities in this area. On the other hand, those who did not send out newsletters before began to invest in them, no longer needing an incentive.
How should a wise marketer today optimize their email marketing efforts?
Start with the basics
Just because you have someone’s email address doesn’t mean you can send them marketing messages. And even if you can (since you have all the approvals), you don’t necessarily have to. You don’t have to convince the addressee to buy something from you from the very beginning. It’s like a date. In the beginning, you make conversation, invite to dinner (or allow yourself to be invited), but do not make serious statements.
When you’re collecting data and about to send your first email to a new subscriber:
First, remember where you got the email address from – the recipient may have already bought something from you.
Later, write why you are contacting him.
Don’t pitch your product or service right away. It almost never works.
Start by building relationships between people.
On the other hand, if you have not communicated with the recipient for a long time, try to resume the dialogue. Be creative. Look at how Pavlo Tkachyk does it, for example, in his famous newsletter.
Information instead of a hard sell
Communication with people to whom the newsletter has already been addressed may look completely different. Especially in this situation, it is worth giving the standard mailing a more human, personal character. For example, you can express your hope that the recipient is doing well. Let me know what mode your company is currently in. Or we apologize in advance for the inconvenience in communication. This message might look like this:
“Long time no see – I hope you are all well, especially in these times. We are now operating as usual, so please remember that you can count on us in case of need.”
However, avoid pushy message topics
Remember that email marketing is a relationship between people who share similar concerns.
Make sure you have well configured message authentication with security features like SPF record and DKIM. A Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record is the primary security measure in the world of integrated Internet marketing. The recipient’s mail server checks whether the IP address of the sender’s mail server is authorized to send messages from this domain. Information about this is contained in a special DNS record for this domain.
Authentication alone is not enough
Good email marketing systems have a feature that makes it easy to segment your database based on how often your recipients open your emails. We call this “loyalty segmentation”.
This means that you can, for example, create a segment of people who have a loyalty rate of 75%, meaning that they opened at least 75% of the messages you sent them. Another thing is people who do not respond to your mailings at all. Their loyalty index is 0. Ultimately, such recipients should disappear from your database. However, before deleting, consider whether they can be reactivated.
To this end, you can prepare a message (or a series of messages, so-called drip marketing ) with intriguing topics to encourage discovery. In this type of campaign, it is often possible to mobilize a significant part of the segment of inactive recipients.
Be careful not to lose the sender’s reputation
The worse your reputation, the more likely you are to get spammed. So take care of things like:
Message template. Don’t overload your emails with graphics, don’t use too much red font.
Message subject. Avoid too many words “promotion”, “last chance”.
A person does not live only by e-mail
Although email marketing is a very effective form of communication, it should be backed up with appropriate transactional communications.
Remember that according to statistics, only 20% of emails are opened by recipients. It is worth sending activation letters to those who have not yet opened them. In turn, it is good to send SMS to those who opened and then followed the link, but did not convert. And when you manage to get the recipient to come back to your website, let them show the appropriate push message with an additional offer.
Add to that some clever social media remarketing and you have a recipe for crisis management.
