The idea of this article came on a Saturday while walking in my neighborhood.
I love to walk around and visit stores of all sizes, to find new ideas, and this occasion was no different.
My walk took me to a recently opened grocery store. It is a small shop for quality products. They are not selling gourmet products but also don’t work with the typical products that we can find in any supermarket.
As I approached the store, I could see a handwritten plaque announcing a tasting of products. That is very interesting as an advertising method.
When I entered it, the person in charge started to tell me about the promotion and what they were offering.
But she also told me that they had planned to do tastings every Sunday, to promote different thematic products.
The first thing that occurred to me was to say:
And could you send me these promotions by email?
I caught her a little in surprise, and she was not quite sure what to say to me, but after thinking a little, she replied:
If you want to come back tomorrow and leave me your email, we will contact you about our new promotions.
Can you see that she wasn’t ready to work with email marketing? But I have to say that she was a good seller.
Remarketing 1.0 Come back tomorrow. As I was enjoying the conversation, I added:
Of course, if you pick up the emails from people who have tasted your product, you can send them new promotions. For example, on Thursday or Friday, you could send a newsletter with the products that you will be presenting on the next Sunday, to refresh the memory of the people who may be interested because that isn’t the first time they are visiting the store.
Do you want to know the truth?
They had not even considered that possibility. Don’t be surprised, as sometimes small business owners ignore things that should be obvious.
But she liked the idea, it seemed like a good idea, and she reminded me several times that I should return on Sunday for the tasting they had planned.
They should have invited me after the good advice I gave them! Advice that I’m sure could bring them advantages if they really worked with email marketing in their sales strategy.
Being honest, I must admit that although the idea occurred to me in that moment, I had already seen other companies that were working with the same strategy.
Catering
Catering
Some time ago, my wife and I were invited to participate on a course to learn how to prepare cupcakes, taught in a nearby city.
After explaining about the course, the teacher asked us to fill in a form with some basic information:
Can you fill in your details and email? So when we have other courses or promotions, we can send you to keep you updated on our activities.
Again, they didn’t even need a website to collect the participants’ emails, they were simply aware that this little gesture would bear fruit in the future.
Why?
Because most participants discovered the course after receiving a coupon sent by a Spanish company called Groupon. Groupon helped them to attract customers who might be interested in this course, but they were not sure if these customers would come back in the future if they received a new coupon sent by Groupon. Certainly they didn’t want to have to sell their products always with a discount coupon when they could create engagement with customers that would be willing to pay for their courses without any intermediation.
They wanted to get in touch with interested people directly by email because as they already know that this company offers courses, these people could return, without any discount, when they start advertising a new course or workshop.
If you are worried about the process, you should know that sending a newsletter is easy, as you won’t have to edit any HTML code. An email marketing software like Mailrelay includes a newsletter editor with all the features you’ll need for creating your first email campaign.
In fact, the course administrator was sending a newsletter in text and with no image.
They simply sent me a brief email in plain text, with a list of promotions, courses and activities planned for the coming weeks, so that I could sign up in advance.
What do they get with that strategy?
1) Customer loyalty, as they are encouraging users to buy again.
2) They will make more money because they won’t have to pay for an external service such as Groupon.
They can sell more and make more money just by asking users to fill in a form with their email and name, something that most of us will do without any complaint. After creating a database, they can send a newsletter to their customers, and some of them will be back for the next course they are promoting.
The costs are minimal, as you saw in the previous example, even a small local business can easily capture new emails.
Aren’t you convinced yet? I’ll give you another example.
Naturhouse
Naturhouse is a product, and advisory franchise focused on helping users lose weight. They created an educational program with all the steps their customers will have to follow for losing weight.
Creating a marketing strategy for a franchise is different from a campaign designed for other types of company, as the creator of the franchise is usually responsible for creating marketing campaigns to promote the brand for all the franchisees. There is little room for small franchisees to create personalized promotions, or maybe not?
Well, some of them can do that.
There is a very good margin to maximize the results of a franchise if the marketing department is prepared to work with email marketing.
I also know in the first person the case that I am mentioning, because I know the owner (And I acknowledge that I have used his services, more than once).
As in the case of catering, when we arrived to attend a lecture offered by the company, they requested our data, to create a register of people interested in their project.
This may sound trivial. After all, what could a nutritionist send out by email?
If you think about it, you will understand the reason for their behavior.
The fact is that with enough effort, sacrifice and discipline, The diet worked for us, and after achieving our goal, we obviously stopped using the service.
At this point, this business, this particular franchise, stopped making money as we were no longer paying for their services.
That is, as they did a fantastic work and the result was positive, they ended up losing a customer, which is curious, right?
But what if there were some way to recover those lost clients?
They could try to recover these clients with an email marketing strategy.
You need to understand that some of those customers who have achieved good results will have problems again (they will gain weight) and therefore they will become potential customers again, even more so when they already know that they had satisfactory results the previous time they paid for the services offered by the company.
Maybe if they got an email at the right time, they could decide to start working to lose weight again.
When would it be more timely?
– Before or after Christmas, for example
– A few months before the summer starts
This would certainly bring them good results.
And actually they are doing it.
In these key moments, this company sends emails to its old customers, encouraging them to return, if they need it, to stay in shape for the summer or lose the extra pounds they’ve gained during the Christmas holiday.
Nothing more than an email with a short text, that they can write in less than five minutes. If they are using an email marketing software, they could send this message to all customers with a simple click.
With good results, I can tell from my own experience.
Once again we see an example of how with minimal effort, you can get great results with email marketing.
Or you would not like to attract old customers and convince them to trust you again?
With that, we have seen the three examples that I have commented for you, but…
Would it be possible to get even more advantages by working with email marketing?
If you know me well, I’m sure you think that I’ll talk about autoresponders.
Well, you’re right!
If you use an email marketing software, such as Mailrelay, you can create autoresponders to automate your email campaigns.
I’ll give you some ideas, taking the cases we mentioned as examples.
(1) For the first store => in this case, you could use an autoresponder to prepare recipes with products sold in the store. The main purpose of these emails would be to create engagement with subscribers and advertise the products available in the store.
These emails don’t have to be related to tastings, but you could use them to remind your subscribers to visit the store whenever possible. As you always would be adding new subscribers, you should vary the content of your newsletters. For instance, if you send different recipes, even users who didn’t visit the store recently will probably be interested, which is good for boosting your open rate and creating engagement with your list of emails.
(2) Catering => They could use autoresponders for the same purpose, sending emails with recipes, ideas for parties, with tips and suggestions. Maybe they could send a promotion from time to time, between several informative newsletters.
Without a website, it will be very complicated to work with autoresponders, because they can’t collect emails and keep in touch with potential customers since they are working directly with the customers who visited their installations. And it is not possible to work with potential customers who are not familiar with the business.
(3) Naturhouse => in this case, they could apply a different strategy, creating a series of emails that would be sent during the time the customer is working with the company. They could send messages with tips on the food re-education program, messages to encourage the new customer, recipes related to the diet, advice on sports activities and testimonials from people who have already participated in the program.
You can automate this process to do the job only once if you work with the right email marketing software.
Also, this type of message can help to encourage customers so that they will keep paying for the services, thus increasing the franchisee’s profits.
We’re just guessing, but it really would not be too complicated to apply these ideas into a real deal, and you could have fantastic results if you start working with autoresponders.
In all three cases, we can improve a business that is already working well with email campaigns.
And I personally think an autoresponder is a basic tool for any email marketing campaign. With the examples we’ve seen, you can see that it’s also a great option for off-line companies.
Other Possible Ideas That Unify Local Businesses and Email Marketing
We can do so much more with an autoresponder.
For example, if these companies decided to create a blog to post relevant content to their customers, they could use an email marketing software such as Mailrelay to send these posts automatically through an RSS feed. Automating this process is very advantageous for several reasons, but mainly because it is not necessary to create each newsletter manually, you only have to do the job once and the system will keep your customers up to date and send them your newsletters.
You can also schedule your emails well in advance to get everything ready.
If you do that, you can work on other tasks while the email marketing software will send the emails for you.
In summary
Three actual cases of companies that are working with email marketing, with different situations and challenges, but with very interesting results and minimal effort.
Real cases, which I have known personally and which show that any company can work with an email marketing software and get fantastic results.
Without much experience in digital marketing.
There are no excuses! And many possible advantages!
Do you know a similar case? Share your experience in the comments!
