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Getting More Out Of E-mail
E-newsletters are one way to connect with customers immediately and in a personal way.
Everybody e-mails. It seems to be the one technology that has permeated every business.
“E-mails are the next wave of media,” says Karen Thacker of Altum’s, Zionsville, Ind. How can you take advantage of this widespread two-way means of communication? The e-newsletter! Need advice on how to pull it off?
1. Know Your Audience
When planning a new e-newsletter, determine your goals, says Timothy Howard, president of Clarity Connect. Will you target customers who have purchased from you recently or from those who have purchased in the past?
“If someone hasn’t bought from you in a year, that’s a different message,” Howard says. “You may have to provide some kind of incentive to get them back in your garden center.”
Rice’s Nursery, Canton, Ohio, manages its own e-mail list and sends and writes content internally. Sends include between five and eight stories, with timely information on insect or disease issues, new items and products on sale. The newsletter is part of an integrated marketing plan, including a print newsletter, since not all customers are on the Internet.
“We do not want to just send a sales-only newsletter,” Steve Maddox, garden center manager at Rice’s, says. “Most of our print newsletters are mainly informative. We try to educate as well as offer great deals currently going on.” Thacker says Altum’s e-newsletter includes seasonal gardening tips, a schedule of upcoming classes and promotions.
Entering Content In Clarity Connect
The Clarity E-Marketing Console by Clarity Connect eliminates the need for a tech savvy person to create and/or send your e-newsletter. To add images, click on the image tab and you browse your computer or network and click on the image you want to add to the article. The system sizes and optimizes the image to prepare it for the web. You can also add captions for the selected images. Adding pictures is as simple as attaching a file to an e-mail.
Click on the image above to enlarge.
Other key e-newsletter content is featured plants, community involvement and staff profiles, Howard says.
2. Save Marketing Dollars
“We have benefitted by saving some advertising dollars," Thacker says. "Instead of investing in direct mail or ad space during our off-peak hours, we are able to communicate to our customers through the e-newsletter relatively inexpensively.”
| Online Only: Who's Your Target? | ||
|---|---|---|
| Targeting a specific segment of your audience is the first step towards great e-mail marketing, according to Timothy Howard of Clarity Connect. He suggests some target audiences and the types of marketing they need | ||
| Potential Target Audience | Potential Goal Of E-Newsletter | |
| Customers who have purchased from you recently | Increase frequency of visits and purchases | |
| Customers who have purchased from you in the past | Provide information and/or incentive to increase likelihood that they will visit and purchase again | |
| People who have signed up for the e-newsletter on your site, but have not purchased | Encourage them to visit the 'brick and mortar' garden center | |
| Landscape contractors | Increase sales by promoting seasonal pants and products. | |
| Highly cost-conscious customers | Make it easy for them to know the weekly sales and clearance items. | |
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To make this targeted marketing easier, Clarity Connect offers e-mail address management that includes the option of assigning addresses to one or more mailing lists. |
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3. Get Your News Out Immediately
The immediacy of this marketing medium is the advantage Maddox sees.
“Most of our marketing and printing is done earlier in the season,” he says. “If we notice something today, and want to put it on sale, we can notify people through the e-newsletter immediately. ”
4. Don’t Start From Scratch
Writing an e-newsletter can be a lot of work and Howard says not having enough time to create interesting articles is the number one reason garden centers don’t send an e-newsletter. Clarity Connect is building a bank of content, like how-to articles, for customers to include in their sends. These articles can be customized by the garden center before being sent, including editing text and adding photos.
As far as design goes, Clarity Connect users modify templates to approximate the look and feel of the customer’s website. Check with your website provider to see if your site content can be integrated with your newsletter. POS systems also integrate with some e-newsletter providers to manage e-mail lists.
E-newsletter provider Datakart interacts with Altum’s POS system to collect customer e-mail addresses at the point of sale, a method that has netted 2,200 names. Thacker says her staff writes the content internally, some of it borrowed from the seasonal print newsletters, which are written professionally.
5. The Names Are The Key
“Most of the sources of the ‘opt-in’ e-mail addresses have harvested e-mail addresses without the consent of the owner of the e-mail address,” Howard says. He emphasizes retailers should not purchase e-mail lists unless they’re from a very credible source.
“The best way to collect e-mails is to have someone dedicated to asking customers and telling them the benefits of the e-newsletters,” Thacker says.
“We’ve found signups tend to be viral,” Maddox says. “Once a newsletter goes out, people sign up. We also promote it in all print material we send out.”
Gale's Garden Center, Westlake, Ohio, gathers addresses at the registers, at an information board, and during seminars and events.
"We occasionally will provide an offer of some kind encouraging customers to switch from snail mail to e-mail, a coupon or discount of some sort," says Barb Walters, sales manager.
6. Make It Personal
“Put in some of your own thoughts, or the thoughts from one of your garden center employees,” Howard says. “It brings your message much closer to home. It helps, in an ancillary way, to increase staff morale. People like to see their name in lights.”
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