While digital marketing and inbound marketing may seem like it’s all about attracting new leads and customers to your business, a large part of digital marketing includes the retention of your current customers. Yep, loving your current and past customers ensures repeat business and good word of mouth – and who doesn’t love a good bit o’ word of mouth?! And email marketing is a great way to do this! You can continue to build on those relationships, promote your content, and generate new business from existing customers.

Many businesses we speak to pooh-pooh the idea of email marketing or exclaim ‘I tried it and it didn’t work!’ But it’s not a ‘try it once’ type of game – as we’ve mentioned previously, digital marketing is a long game, with email marketing included.  Here’s a stat from Hubspot’s website ‘email marketing generates $38 for every $1 spent, which is an outstanding 3800% return on investment, making it one of THE most effective options available’. That is a huge ROI, so if you’re not doing it, why not?

If you are not engaging with your current and past customers, and are only focusing on getting new clients, then you need to rethink your strategy.  Here are 4 things you can do to market effectively via email.

  1. Get organised with a CRM

Firstly, you need a customer relationship management system or database. This is where you can keep track of new leads, segment your database into lists such as leads, customers, subscribers and more. You can also go so far as to segment your customers into what they purchased. The more you segment, the better your email marketing will be. Why? Because you can then target the right email, to the right person, and the right time.

  1. Goal!

Again, there’s no point doing any marketing if you don’t set an objective. How will you know if an email campaign has been successful unless you have a goal? If you’ve sent out emails before with no goal, it’s okay if you give yourself a face palm – we’ve all been there. Your goal can be anything you like such as open rate, click through rate and conversion rate (those who actually purchased from you after opening that email).

  1. Get scheduling!

Have a think about how many emails you’d like to send to your customer database, then stick to it! If it’s once a week, once a fortnight or once a month, being consistent will mean less unsubscribes. Don’t send one a month, then start sending once a week unless you let your customers know. That way they can choose to limit the emails they receive from you. What we’re trying to say, in not so many words is, don’t annoy your customer!

  1. Results, results, results!

With your goal in mind, review the email results! Any email marketing platform will have insights into how your email performed. Look and see which links were clicked on the most. Why? Perhaps the offer, or content was good, so more click throughs. What didn’t get clicks? Why? Ask yourself the hard questions, then work to ensure your next email has more of the good stuff, and less of the not-so-great stuff.

Now, go forth and ensure your customers are feeling the love!