Whoever says email marketing is a dead art form is very mistaken. Pretty much everyone still has an email account these days and uses it. Smart phones and other portable devices have made it possible to connect and stay on top of your emails on the go and at any time.
As a salon owner, you own a business that flourishes from customer interactions that needs to develop ways to attract new, as well as retain current clients. Email is not only a powerful marketing tool it is also free to use with many providers. The options with emails are plenty and it can be used in many ways, from campaigns to promotional emails. There are a few simple steps you need to do in order to optimise your emails, to get the most our of them.
Getting started
First, you’ll need an email marketing service such as Mail Chimp. Many of these services offer a free version up to a certain number of emails per month. These services offer plenty of different templates that allow you to create different designs to match your business. However, the key with email marketing is not to overload your customers with too many emails. Less is better will do the trick in this instance.
Here are some tips on what content you want to be sending and how you can measure your success:
Salon e-newsletter
Why not start with a monthly salon e-newsletter. Newsletters are great to tell customers about your business and any industry news they might find interesting. Go easy on promotional material, writing too much about offers and deals can put people off and will lose you subscribers as it will come across too sales driven. If you make your content entertaining and useful to your subscribers, they will be more likely to stay local.
Use a creative and grabbing subject line
A lot can be decided even before your emails is opened. If the subject line doesn’t spark a subscribers interest it will go straight in the bin without giving up any further consideration about the content. Meaning, you’ve only got seconds to grab someones attention. Therefore, try to avoid words in your subject line like special | free | percentage off | reminder | £ $ symbols | ! | as they will likely trigger spam filters and subscribers also know that you want to push your products on them. Once you have their attention and they have opened your email you want to make sure to keep the content concise and right to the point.
Keep track of your performance
Emails get open just to be deleted again or to unsubscribe. Even though in your report it is marked as success, you haven’t really achieved new clients or revenue with this. A good way to track if people are reacting to your email is to measure performance with Google Analytics. For example, you can set up different goals such as see when people clicked on a link in your email. When you set up your campaigns and you want valuable information about your customers this is a great way to do so.
Testing can be good as well. Create similar emails and see which one is performing better so you know what clients prefer and click on more often.
Make sure it works on all devices
(Source: Marketingland)
If you want to make sure your email is catching the reader’s eye and will be opened make sure it works across all screens. Meaning, it is important that your email campaign adjusts to different devices and screen sizes.
You can check the exact percentage of open rates and which devices were used on Google Analytics again. Once you are aware of the most popular device you can make sure everything works according to people preferences.
Overall, email marketing can be a great way building relationships with current and potential customer when done right. Record what you learn from customers in a database. This way you can adjust your marketing. For example, if there is a popular time people open your email then send campaigns around that time. This might require some initial trial and error testing but after a few attempts, you should have some valuable info what clients prefer.
As always if you have any questions or need advice don't hesitate to contact us via phone, email or social media.
Salon Tracker x
