Maximize the impact of email marketing

A few weeks ago, I had a really interesting discussion with the owner of a small independent retail store. The stores is a specialty wine store, who started this business out of his garage.

The owner told me about his struggles, he like everybody else, wants to increase the customer base while driving frequency with his regulars. With this challenge comes a close to non existing budget.

Can you make efficient marketing on a shoestring budget? YES, he can make a simple 3 legged strategy, which can elevate to a higher level.

• Location and shopping experience

This point is aced. When you enter the showroom, which is in a nice location, on a busy street, you are greeted by the owner, who is passionate, knowledgeable and present.

• Word of Mouth (brand advocacy)

The shopping experience customers receive, is way above average, the owner gives his customers a good experience, and the do tell about their experience, and he experiences that traffic is increasing, however not fast enough.

• Email marketing

The big key is build a solid mailing list and set-up an emailing program which takes advantage of the content of this mailing list, to segment the content to different mailing groups

Learn about guerilla marketing.

Building an effective email platform is NOT expensive but requires hard work. Here is my advice:

• Take advantage of the personal shopping experience and ask customer to join the mailing list. Throw them a bone…. inform them what to expect from the email they are to receive and why they are relevant. Exclusive sales, invites to tasting events, competitions and relevant product information

• Ask the customer to leave more than their email. They should leave the following information: First name; last name; email; postal code; gender; age; preference as a minimum   

• Form a number of relevant segments (mailing groups) based upon the above mentioned details, examples of this:
• Group with young men, who is willing to strop in the market and learn about wine
• Group of men, who is interested in the best deal
• Group of women, who like other types like rosé and white
• Etc.

• Write content that matches the segmented groups. consider that each email should hold about 3-4 topics, some can be generic, which others must be targeted directly to meet the expectations of the group.

• Start sending emails. I prefer to use mailchimp.com is a very user freindly platform, that is free to use in the standard format with list <2000 subscribers.

• Remember to include social media sharing options

• Never stop testing, test placements, links, colors, buttons, headlines and much more.

This program will do well for this independent wine store, and it would do well in plenty of other businesses. The key to maximize performance starts with building a high quality mailing list and using the details of the list to get as personal as possible.

Personalized information will always be better over the generic emails. If you get this and the design and landscape of the email right, you will experience high opening rates, click rates and conversation rates.

For the wine store, this will drive enough revenue to invest more into the business and expand it further.

Good luck