How Email Marketing Fits Into Perfect Omni-Channel Marketing
Email marketing doesn’t just fit into omni-channel marketing, it is the cornerstone of omni-channel marketing; it may even be the linchpin. It is the one option besides a website where you can keep drawing on your consumer’s attention, where you can keep touching base with them, and where you can offer a central place for them to reacquaint themselves with you.
Video Publications
Websites and social media platforms that host videos are making great use of email marketing, and it is as simple as offering information on the newest video posts by users. A mix of custom-picked videos, built using the user’s tastes, is often all that is needed to stimulate interest from people who have already subscribed.
Keep these as short and as simple as possible. Look at how YouTube uses the name of the video and the thumbnail. Your aim is not to hard-sell the video, you need to let some drift by. Your goal is to show people what you have like a menu in a restaurant. Push too hard, and people will unsubscribe.
Gaming Platforms
Many gaming platforms like GOG and Steam use email marketing to offer a digest of the most recent games and game discounts. Their email subject lines keep it simple, and it works to a great degree. You can also keep people up to date about updates to the games that are currently in their library.
Gamers are not the easiest to sell to, but they are certainly the most forgiving when it comes to marketing. It is not that gamers are suckers, it is that they are very invested in gaming, which is fair since a gaming experience will often last over 55 hours. You do not have to hard-sell to gamers, but even if you do, they will probably continue subscribing just so long as your emails do not become repetitive. They want to see what you have, what is old, what is new, what is updated … they do not want you to push one game over and over again.
Double-Confirmation
Want to make sure your user is receiving your email, and want to keep yourself off the spam blacklists, then you have your users double-confirm. They click the link in your confirmation email and you can be sure your sign-up is for real.
Double-confirmation is required if you wish to use legitimate bulk emailers like Constant Contact and MailChimp because they will not accept email lists if they were not correctly built.
Newsletters
You do not need a fancy newsletter design because you can keep things very simple and people will still respond. Perhaps they have been groomed by text-based platforms like Reddit and Twitter, but these days you do not need a fancy newsletter design to get people to engage with your emails.
This email needs to be smothered in your brand like hot toast is smothered in butter. The only way to keep people interested in your email newsletter is to make it all about whatever your website or service is all about. If you are going to overtly market with your newsletter, then make sure it is an organic part of the newsletter. For example, if you are emailing about how your new Smartphone can be used underwater, then explain how it is possible, and offer links to the videos showing it being used underwater, and then try to sell the phone.
Blog Posts
Many bloggers prefer to use the confirmation email method to get people to sign up to their newsletter. When a new blog post is published, the blogger sends out a notification and a brief provide via email and people may or may not respond.
Notify people that your blog post has been posted, and then give them a bit of a teaser. For example, you can give them the title and then maybe the first paragraph. Add a “Continue Reading” link to the end of the paragraph, and have it link to your blog post. Make sure it links to the post and not to the blog itself because people may read your blog post emails months after you send them when they are catching up on their reading, and you do not want all your old emails to send people to your home page.
Direct Marketing
Simply offering a good deal and stating as such in your email subject lines is enough to get new sales. Being honest and very open with your email subject lines will lower your opening rates, but the people who open are far warmer leads because they know what they are getting themselves into.
Some people do sign up for these. Just make sure you are not constantly pushing the same products or using the same routines. Also, if you want to keep people subscribed, then think less about conversions. Never push too hard. Try to add exclusive discount codes to every email, but make sure to rotate the categories. One week it may be discount codes to your stationery, another week it is discount codes to your confectionery that are also free to distribute to friends.
Podcasts
If it were not for email marketing, then podcasts would be very difficult to follow. We all used to enjoy RSS feeds, but who can be bothered to check a feed on a browser when these days you can be notified about new podcast publications with a simple email.
Give the topics of your podcasts as if they were titles. Giving a title and a brief overview of your podcast is not enough to get people interested in the long term. Instead, give them a series of title sentences such as, “How Chris Chibnall Killed Doctor Who,” “Will the BBC lose its funding?” “Have TV writers forgotten how to write Sci-Fi shows?”
Discount Codes
Let’s say you offer surveys over social media in return for discount codes. Once people earn their discount codes, you can deliver them via email. The emails may also contain marketing for other products, services, and social media channels.
Playing the discount code game is very tricky because you need a product selection that matches the selling approach. For example, people need groceries every week, so offering different discounts on different food types is a good idea. Also, people often buy video games on the spur of the moment, and discounts can often push them into buying. However, weekly discounts on sofas are more likely to scare away subscribers than it is to attract new customers.
Forum Notifications
When people ask questions on forums, they often receive answers hours and days later. Forum notifications do not seem like big marketing tools, but they get people back to your forum, and you can add additional messages into each email.
It is imperative that these be offered in a digest form or some sort of weekly form. Forums can fill up quickly, and nobody wants to turn on their computer to see 50 emails from the same forum. Perhaps offer people a choice that allows them to see forum posts that are directed at them only on a real-time basis, and the rest is given as a weekly digest.
Tech and Customer Support
People expect to be contacted by the customer service department and tech support through email. You can get people back on your website, and you can even rescue a sale or convert an angry customer if you do it correctly. Plus, you may be able to encourage future sales and help build up your brand in the reader’s mind through the use of customer support emails.
Your technology and customer support functions are not direct marketing methods. They are used for PR and branding. They show that you are a decent, careful and attentive merchant. It is not always about getting back to people quickly, it is about giving people as many options as possible. The more doors you open with your replies, then the more likely it is people will walk through them and stick around.
For example, if somebody asks, “Does your TV have closed captioning?” do not reply with “No.” Reply saying no, but directing the person to an app that offers closed captioning, and to services that have embedded closed captioning, and even to the new models of TV that have closed captioning and then offer them a discount on their new TV.
Keep Your Subscribers
Each of the entries has advice on how to implement your email marketing for each content channel. The main goal is to keep your subscribers. Some amateur marketers think they are a failure when they go weeks with very little response, but that is not the way it works. People receive emails all the time and do not look at them, but they still want the emails, it is just that they are not appealing at that point in time. If you try to push people into opening your emails and clicking through your emails, then you are inconveniencing them and will push them away.
Also, try to remember that for some people your emails are their primary method for reacquainting themselves with you. They may have you saved to their favorites, but their favorites is so full they cannot find you. They may vaguely remember your name, or even have subscribed to your social media channel, but they still use your emails as a way to find you. Such people look through their email inbox for the last email from you and find you that way. If you push people away and force them to unsubscribe, then you make it harder for them to find you in the future.
