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How To Use Email Marketing To Grow Your Tea Business
As digital marketing goes, nothing else has a greater ROI than email marketing. Not even social media or paid ads come close to dominating it. But if this is the case, why are so many people pushing for you to use Instagram, Facebook and other forms of paid ads and not as many people are pushing for email marketing? One major reason for this is that email marketing has a bit of an image problem. In the digital marketing world, everyone is always looking for that new strategy. What new way can I go about doing the same thing? In this shiny new world of polished pictures and fast paced videos, email marketing seems like a bit of a dinosaur. But that couldn't be further from the case.
Email marketing is probably the oldest form of digital marketing but yet, it's still the most profitable with $1 spent on one email bringing back an average of $42… cool right? But how do you get in on a piece of the action? Here's a birds eye view on how you can use email marketing to boost your tea business as well as some important things to consider when starting.
Let's Break it Down
Step 1: Create your email list
You can't really do email marketing if you don't have any emails to market to. The best way of creating an email list is by providing valuable content to your target audience This can be either in the form of a lead magnet, which is usually an ebook, infographic or webinar you provide for free in exchange for your prospects email address. Lead magnets have to provide some useful information or solution to a problem your prospect is facing or they could simply be a tool for making their life easier. Possible examples of lead magnets for tea businesses could be:
Possible examples of lead magnets for tea businesses could be:
A simple infographic showing the steeping instructions for the different types of teas.
The next path is through creating blogs, videos or social media posts that entertain, inform and inspire your audience. Once they like your content enough, you can then prompt them to subscribe to your email list to keep in touch with the content they've come to love. This works easily for blogs but social content is a bit harder. We recommend creating exclusive content for your email subscribers and let your general audience know about the awesome content they can access by simply providing their email address. One final note on building your list, don't bother buying emails from lead selling sites. Not only are you filling up your email list with people who don't want to receive your messages, you're also setting yourself up as a scammer for a one way ticket to the email black list. Once in there, all your emails are either blocked from prospects inboxes or get sent straight to spam (sometimes with a spam warning attached). It's simply not worth it, even if you delete your list and start over with people who want to get your mail. The email service providers will treat your domain the same, plus it's known to be ridiculously hard to get out of the blacklist once you're in.
Step 2: Segmentation
If you get this right, you're on the path to guaranteeing success with your email marketing. Different people are going to subscribe to your email list for different reasons and you need to segment them properly. Segmentation can start from how they came into your list in the first place. The people who opted for a lead magnet are coming in for entirely different reasons when compared to the people who dropped their emails in your store. You need to think hard about why they came into your list in the first place and then create content that appeals to their interests. Someone who came into your email list after attending an event at your physical store would be interested in hearing about your next events, specials available in the store and other similar information. But, someone who lives on the other side of the country, who subscribes to get a lead magnet won't have any interest in this and will most likely unsubscribe from your list.
However, if you do segment properly, you will be able to provide your audience with exactly the content they want and give them the sense that you created your list solely to serve them, which can be powerful for your business.
Proper segmentation means you are promoting the right things to the people who want to see them, improving the likelihood for converting into a sale.
Step 3: Give them a reason to stay
Once your list and segmentation is put together, you can finally get down to sending your emails. The emails you send out will fall into 1 of 2 categories, nurturing or sales.
Nurturing emails are the emails you send out to build trust with your audience, get them more informed with your product and generally make them more receptive to you when you do send out your sales emails. They can and should be a healthy mix of informative, entertaining and inspirational.
Examples of nurturing emails are:
- Newsletters
- Testimonials
- How-to and other information pieces
- Blog articles (either linked to or directly in the email)
- Webinars
Sales emails are any email that you send with the implicit purpose of getting your prospects to buy something, either by linking directly to the product in the email or linking them to a sales page where they can purchase the product.
Examples of sales emails are:
- Product Promotion
- Discount and Sales Announcement
- Direct sales and call outs
There needs to be a good relationship between the number of nurturing and sales emails. You don't want to send only nurturing emails and not get any sales in, but you also don't want to send only sales emails and chase off your prospects by being too pushy. Most email marketers use a 4:1 nurturing to sales ratio.
For every 4 nurturing emails you send, you can then send 1 sales email. This is a good starting point but be sure to take into account your unique audience segments, they may need more or less nurturing and may be open to a more aggressive sales schedule.
Step 4: Focus on your converted leads
Once someone has purchased or been converted through emails, a lot of businesses simply let this person continue as they were in the email list, receiving the same content as everyone else… This is a major mistake
Many tea businesses forget that repeat purchasers are not only easier to market to, they also spend more on average. Once someone converts in your list, move them to a new segment in your list, these people should be given more priority and the best of your content as they are going to be the most receptive when you send out a sales email.
Plus the nature of their sales emails should change, you don't need to spend time convincing them about your product, they already believe, hence why they bought. All they need most times is a reason to buy now.
Discounts, sales or special events are usually enough to get them to repurchase. These types of customers have the biggest potential of becoming fans and advocates of your business, by providing them with special treatment will hopefully make them go the extra mile for you.
Step 5: Keep the train going
Email marketing is like a snowball, it's slow to gain momentum and if you don't do enough early on, it may not even get moving at all.
But if you keep at it and provide great content and lead gen, focus on the right ratio of nurturing and selling, and focus on your converted leads, you will soon be reaping the amazing results that other businesses have gained from email marketing.
Email marketing best practices
Here are a few things you need to be doing throughout your email marketing process, these will help you get the most out of your subscribers.
Automate your emails.
Every major email service provider gives you the ability to create automated campaigns and schedule your emails.
Utilizing this tool will be your greatest asset. Create a series of emails that welcomes someone to your list and introduces your brand to them. Not only can you set them to go out at specific times without having to individually send them, you can set them to go out every time someone enters your email list, so you don't have to stress at all.
Personalize for your audience
Personalizing your emails is an easy way of getting your prospects to feel instantly more connected with your messages. Using general terms like ‘friend’ and ‘subscriber’ are distant and cold. Using your prospects first name in the beginning of the email or the subject line has a huge impact on whether or not they feel the urge to read or even open your email.
Sound like a human
Write your emails as though you were writing to a friend, this helps esp algorithms place you in the main inbox rather than the promotions tab. This is classic sales email behavior and gets you sent straight to the promotions tab.
Don't use sales buzzwords in your headlines
Avoid words like, ‘discount’, ‘sales’, ‘promo’ and other sales buzzwords. For the same reason as the above tip. You don't want to appear like a sales email.
CONCLUSION
Email marketing is the most important thing you as a business can be doing, especially if you're a smaller business.
It's much cheaper than paid ads, provides a more personal experience and helps in boosting your brand's reputation far better than other forms of digital marketing.
The only thing about email marketing is it is time consuming. It takes a while to get the subscribers flowing in and you need to give it constant attention to see it work, but then again, is that really so different to social media?