Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, but it’s still relevant today because of how successful it is compared to its price. Even if you send a hundred emails a year and your average recipient only opens 5% of them, they are still seeing your brand name in their inbox again and again, and they’re still opening 5 emails.
Email marketing can take many different forms. You can indirectly market by sending out educational newsletters that have information about everything in the world of jewelry, from sourcing diamonds to birthstones and metal types. You can directly market by sending out sale information, new inventory promotions, and other emails that prompt recipients to view your products. You can send out monthly or quarterly store newsletters, introducing new staff or profiling old ones, updating clients on your store hours, and keeping them up-to-date on events happening at your store.
Sending Quality Emails
Most people sign up for emails in order to get something: sometimes, that’s a freebie that the company offers in exchange for your email address. Other times, they truly want information on your store, products, and brand. Quality emails can take many forms, but they are always clear, eye-catching, and adopt a multi-media approach. If your newsletter looks more like this knowledgebase article than a magazine page, you have far too much text and not enough images or videos.
A good strategy for email marketing is to embed your social media feeds (Instagram is best, since it is the most visually appealing) and link to any blog posts, articles, or guides you’ve published since the last email was sent out. More than most other platforms, users are used to following links that lead them outside of the email. Your click-through-rate (CTR) on email is an important metric to track because it shows interaction and interest. Providing lots of opportunities for users to leave the email and visit your website, social media feeds, or features on other sites increases the CTR.
There is increasing research showing that videos and visual content encourage more clicks. While someone might not read your whole email, they are fairly likely to click on an embedded video. Always provide hyperlinks on your photos as well as CTA buttons; many users will select an image directly instead of clicking on a button to register, shop, or read more.
Another helpful tool when designing emails is consistency: make each email look similar to the others, and design your emails to reflect your website and brand aesthetics. Use the same fonts and colors, and put your logo in at the top of every email.
Email Frequency
Brand awareness is increasingly important as e-commerce continues to grow. It’s a good practice to put your store’s name in people’s inboxes once a week to keep you top of mind. If someone only hears from you once a quarter, they might not even see that email buried in the avalanche of marketing emails from every other store and company they follow.
You can decide how often to send emails, but another good practice is re-targeting. Most email services let you see who opened the email and who clicked on something. Some even show conversions, displaying which clicks led to purchases, if integrated correctly. A day or two after sending an email, take a look at who opened it and who clicked. If you’re trying to reach customers who haven’t opened your email to advertise a sale, segment those customers into a separate list, and re-send your previous email. Likewise, if you have a list of customers who opened your email but didn’t click anything, or you can see customers who clicked but did not make a purchase, you can segment them and draft a separate email incentivizing them to take another look. As long as you’re not spamming inboxes multiple times a day, it doesn’t hurt to send a follow-up email.
Many marketers use the term campaign when describing a marketing effort for a specific purpose: perhaps your campaign is designed to book more appointments for custom jewelry or sell a holiday special bracelet that benefits a charity in your area.
Integrate Email with E-commerce
Tie your email service in to your e-commerce platform to track sales and conversions. In order to do this, you may need Punchmark’s assistance. Contact your account manager for details.
Emails for Retail Jewelers
Email marketing is one of the best ways to make online sales. It can also be useful for indirect marketing. Here are some ideas for sending emails that aren’t all about advertising your latest sale:
Educational content: entice more opens with some fun facts about the birthstone of the month. Make sure your subject line contains a teaser!
Win-back emails: if you haven’t heard from or seen a customer in a while, send them a win-back email. Ask how they’ve been, and use their name in the subject line if your email service allows it. “James, we miss you!” is a lot more personal than “We miss you.”
New collections: tout your latest and greatest in a “styles of the season” email. Bonus points if you get some photos with a model wearing the jewelry in a seasonal setting.
Email marketing is as limited as your imagination. As with all digital marketing, it does take some tweaking to figure out what works best for your store. Experiment with frequency and content to find the solution that works for you.