Use humor in your marketing, as Dollar Shave Club does, and prospects will connect your brand with positive emotions.
Email marketing fetches a 4,300 percent return on investment for U.S. businesses, according to the Direct Marketing association, and marketers consistently rank it as the single most effective tactic for awareness, acquisition, conversion and retention, according to Gigaom Research.
Used correctly, email marketing works, according to the experts; used incorrectly, it can “annoy, bore or even repel people from your business,” according to Dan Scalco, founder and director of growth, Digitalux, writing for Inc.com.
Scalco points to what he considers to be four key directives that lead to successful email campaigns — used to great effect by four brands:
1) Don’t just sell, educate. “Many email campaigns fail because the main goal is to sell,” Scalco writes. “So the marketers end up treating their subscribers like ATMs instead of actual people.” Ecommerce store HuckBerryblends storytelling with sales pitches, giving their prospects curated content, blog posts and beautiful images, the combination of which helps to build the HuckBerry brand.
2) Make ‘em laugh. If customers associate your brand with positive emotions, they’ll keep coming back. Dollar Shave Club uses humor, such as chuckle-inducing cartoons, to do this. “Open almost any of their emails and you’ll be hard pressed not to at least chuckle when you read it,” Scalco says.
3) Personalize and localize. “Relationships are built by first knowing how to connect personally with your target audience,” Scalco writes. Rather than emailing one massive list, Uber breaks down its list by state, which enables them to send more targeted, personalized messages. One campaign, sent to New Jersey recipients prior to an anticipated NJ Transit rail strike, encouraged commuters to share rides with neighbors.
4) Earn respect via curated content. Software licensing company Moz could easily sent out an email linking to its latest blog post, but instead they curate interesting content from the web and package it as the “Moz Top 10,” and it’s a list of blog posts, guides and videos vetted by the company’s top marketers. “Because of this newsletter of curated content,” Scalco writes, “they are more likely to be viewed as industry experts for providing a simple, highly valuable service.”
Get more details on these campaigns and even more guidance from successful email marketers in the floral industry here.
