In today’s blog, we’re going to talk about what we believe to be one of the most important pieces of marketing you can do for your kitchen and bathroom business. We’ll talk about why it’s so good, what it’s done for our business over the years, and how you can implement it too.
In recent years we’ve seen a huge rise in the options available to us when it comes to channels for getting more customers – Google search, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn to name a few. But we know that one of the most important pieces of marketing is a regular email, and we are seeing the results to know that’s true.
There, I said it. In an age where kitchen business owners all over the country are telling us that email doesn’t work for them, and open rates are dwindling, and the introduction of the promotions tab in many leading email providers has made things harder. I’m disagreeing with all of the above and saying that email marketing is still one of the best strategies that you can be using to grow your kitchen business.
And this isn’t based on an opinion, because after all, opinions don’t matter when we’re talking about making sales. Results are what matter. And here’s the thing: Every single time we send emails we make money. You might want to read that sentence again as it’s a game changer.
Now, I’m not saying that it’s always been like that – lots of hard work over a long period of time is what has led us to this position. Don’t think you can just start sending emails daily and expect instant results. It doesn’t work like that.
The sort of email marketing we’re talking about is over a much longer period of time. It’s a slow burner. When I first started out in business, I was told that following up on prospects is the most important thing that you can ever do. And now we have proof.
We’ve had people that have been on an email list for over five years and never bought a single thing. Then, one day, they turn into a customer. Dan Kennedy, the well-known American copywriter and marketing genius has a rule that he never stops following up with a prospect. Ever.
A lot of people laugh when they hear they should be following up for such a long period. It’s not a gag, and if you laugh it off and forget about it, the joke’s on you.
We like to think of our regular email as a ‘marketing safety net’. Writing an email to our list is now a ‘business behaviour’. It’s something we do religiously – and it never gets forgotten, because it’s so bloody important.
The key word in the above paragraph is ‘regular’. You see, to do this properly you need to do it all the time. Dabbling in this technique isn’t likely to lead to results. I know a guy who calls his email ‘The Daily Email’. I like that title because it sets an expectation with his prospects. They know that they’re going to receive regular emails, so they expect it and read it. Now, to be clear, I don’t condone that you send daily emails to your prospects. That would be crazy in this industry, but once a month should be your minimum.
Another fallacy that people indulge themselves in is open rates – and the lack of them. Some people get low open rates and think that email marketing doesn’t work. What they don’t understand is that it’s not the email strategy that’s not working – it’s because they have a poor relationship with their list. Relationship is everything.
We use a specific autoresponder sequence when people first get onto our email list. It creates a relationship with the people straight off the bat, meaning all further communications are received well and our positioning in the marketplace is elevated.
So, that said, how should you write to your list in order to create a good relationship with them? We want to make this article useful for you, so here are some techniques that we use. Some of these techniques won’t work for your business and your communication style, but don’t disregard them without proper thought.
- Write to a friend.
We often wonder why businesses hide behind their brand and logo. We’ve always written to our audience from one of our co-founders, Mike and Oli, and tried to write messages like you would a letter to a friend. Being formal in this day and age won’t wash well with everyone.
- Use your own voice.
Develop a writing style that’s unique to you. Find your writing ‘voice’ and embrace it. Try to add a little humour in there, or talk about your day, and some of the things that you’ve been through that are very relatable – for instance, losing your keys or getting bin juice on your sleeve when you were taking out the rubbish earlier. That’s obviously a quick idea and may not be relevant – the point I’m making is that you’re a just a human writing to another human.
- Make it useful.
Making content useful for your reader is a sure-fire way to accrue relationship points. If someone can go away, use your advice and obtain a desired result, then you’re onto a winner. Don’t be afraid to give away some of your best bits of info here, either. If this impresses people, they’re likely to come back for more.
- Don’t go overboard.
This last point takes me back to the first point – writing to a friend. Lots of businesses will use fancy, designed templates to send their emails. They look great, but they do nothing for building a personal relationship with your prospect. If you were writing to a friend, you wouldn’t make a fancy email. You’d just left-align everything and send it black and white with your name at the bottom. So, take that advice and stop over-engineering your emails. You’ll start to find you increase the number of replies you get, which means you’re having a good effect on people.
Hopefully this will help you either optimise your current email marketing strategy, or it’ll help you kick-start your new marketing effort.