Maximise Your Everyday Emails as a Marketing Tool
Have you ever looked in your sent items folder at the end of a busy day and marvelled at the sheer volume of communication you've had that day? Even a slower day in the office involves sending multiple emails, and while many of these are everyday communications, which are not specifically geared towards getting leads or promoting your business, there is still an opportunity to turn these emails into a marketing tool.Even when you're not in the office your emails can still be used to spread the word about you, your company and upcoming events and product launches.
Our email signatures are an overlooked marketing tool. Most of us have our name, contact details and perhaps some links to the business website and social media pages. Because we're used to seeing our own email signatures we don't read them, and they slip out of our circle of thought. This is a mistake, as your email signature can easily be turned into a virtual billboard.We're not suggesting that you add lots of information and links to your signature, because if it's too cluttered people may not take the time to read all it. Adding some useful links to it is a good way of getting more website traffic through, especially if your email is going to be forwarded around an organisation you're hoping to work with.
An easy way to make people pay attention to your email signature is to use colour to draw attention to particular parts of the message, and even to pick a quote for the week and change it in your email signature every Monday. If you can switch something up each week you'll attract proactive attention to your signature because people will want to know your pearls of wisdom for the week.If you were to add a picture of a pet, and change this regularly, it could help people to engage with the content in your email signature by getting their attention first, then leading them through to your core message or promotional link.
To test the efficacy of using your email signature as a marketing tool, create a bespoke landing page for customers to click through to from your emails.You can then use your analytics tools to get an overview of the number of people who have arrived at your website through that route, as well as whether they stayed on the page or clicked through to another page. By comparing the activity and customer journey of those people who click on your email signature link with the activity and customer journey of people who arrive at your site through a differed means you can easily see how effective this strategy is. For a marketing strategy that is almost free, the return on investment doesn't have to be very big to make it worthwhile.
Your out of office message is a criminally underused marketing tool.It's quite common to overlook the opportunities that a well-crafted out of office reply can present, because we're not thinking about work when we write and set these, we're already mentally on holiday! Everyone who receives your out of office reply will read it, at least giving it a cursory glance to find the date of your return.You already have the recipient's attention, so why not capitalise on this and give them some useful links or advance notice of an event?
Maximising your email signature and out of office reply as a marketing tool is easy to do, cost-free (notwithstanding the cost of building a bespoke landing page for analytics purposes, if you choose to do this) and can be done by everyone in your organisation, regardless of their position within the company.
