Using Email To Connect With Customers
Online marketing trends come and go. While it makes sense for the firearms industry to have a presence on popular social media platforms, the competition is fierce. Your business isn’t only pitted against direct competitors, you’re in a battle for attention with cat videos, TikTok dances, memes and even the grandmas keeping up with family photos and activities. Unless you or a staff member is a social media marketing guru, it can be difficult to get excited about social media content creation, not to mention the idea of monitoring all those comments.
Enter email. To many, email may seem to be an evolution of paper junk mail. Do successful businesses hit send virtually and see results? They do. According to Hubspot’s “Ultimate List of Email Marketing Stats for 2022,” 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the past 12 months.1 Another surprising statistic is four out of five marketers said they’d rather give up social media than email marketing. Despite the idea email enjoyed its peak in the late ’90s with AOL and a Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks rom-com, it can be a very valuable tool for your business.
Email Advantage: Opt-In Subscribers
With over 4 billion email users globally, email offers an opportunity for you to truly reach customers. The best part? Assuming you’ve built an authentic list, those customers have opted in. Subscribers are choosing to receive updates — giving you direct access to their inbox. You don’t have to hope Facebook or Instagram will deliver your latest post to their feed. They’ve taken steps to sign up.
Everyone in the guns, ammo and gear business knows all too well the ability to reach the millions of gun owners on these platforms can be stifled further or even prohibited altogether. This, combined with the fact many of the connections on your email list may not be on social media, makes email more valuable than ever.
Any business in the firearms industry can benefit from email marketing. With no “shadow bans” or poor post performances, effective email communication allows you to offer insight on products, services and specials customers can study at their own pace and timing. And you don’t have to be a large manufacturer or publication to reap the benefits either. According to Campaign Monitor, 64% of small businesses are using email marketing to reach customers.
Even as a pro shooter, I have an email list. I treat my subscribers like an extended address book. These contacts represent my most loyal followers and they deserve my attention. If someone is willing to take the time to read and reply to my emails, I make it a point to respond.
Leveraging Email
Are you sold on email but wonder how to leverage it to your advantage? First, it’s important to take email seriously. Unlike social media where posting is fast and free, you’ll want to budget for and plan email marketing efforts. If you don’t already use one, there are many email clients that not only provide a way for you to send out information to the masses, they also offer other useful tools.
Email specialists like Mailchimp and Constant Contact make it easy for customers to sign up for your list and ensure emails are distributed properly. Thoughtful welcome emails, birthday messages and incentives for keeping personal information and preferences up to date are easy to install and automate — saving you time.
“Use email to tell customers about sales and offers, but understand they can be so much more than just advertisements. Offer value, ask questions and use email as an opportunity to let your list know what’s important to you and your company.”
Have A Strategy
It’s important to have an email strategy. No one likes junk or spam. We’ve all been there, signing up for an email list to receive a coupon or benefit only to have our inbox bombarded with incessant sales pitches. Use email to tell customers about sales and offers, but understand they can be so much more than just advertisements. Offer value, ask questions and use email as an opportunity to let your list know what’s important to you and your company.
When in doubt, a simple rule many of us learned in grade school applies: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all. Now just switch “nice” for valuable or useful. Even though you may not be competing with the algorithms, emails are still taking up valuable inbox space. Become a pest and you can be evicted at any time.
Useful Metrics
Not only should you have a strategy, assign a team member the task of replying to emails and check in on how they’re performing. Beyond tracking subscriber numbers, there are other key metrics to pay attention to. A few of the statistics to watch include open rate, click or click-through rate and bounces. The first two are simple. The open rate is the percentage of email recipients who open a given email. A clear, but catchy subject line that appropriately sums up your message can help increase the open rate.
Another useful stat is the click rate. If you plan to embed links to products, blog posts or other pages on your website, this metric lets you know if recipients are going beyond the email and accessing the content provided. No clicks mean no engagement beyond reading the email. Depending on your business, email strategy and the number and types of links, this percentage can help you craft better emails — especially if the goal is to have subscribers visit your website.
The bounce rate represents the percentage of emails that aren’t reaching the recipient. There are two types of bounce rates. A soft bounce means there’s a temporary problem with the email address whereas a hard bounce happens when the email address is no longer valid. Where a soft bounce can be resolved, a hard bounce represents an empty email that should be removed.
Different than a Like or View stat on a social media platform, these metrics offer useful statistical evidence of how effective emails are. Combined with calls to action encouraging engagement online or a visit inside your store, email can build loyalty and exclusivity. Discount codes, quick surveys and giveaway incentives are simple and easy to administer. As you develop an email marketing plan and grow a subscriber base, you’ll have a test group to share ideas with and a way to reward these customers virtually.
“As you develop an email marketing plan and grow a subscriber base, you’ll have a test group to share ideas with and a way to reward these customers virtually.”
Parting Thoughts
There are so many ways to make email work for your business. A detailed monthly newsletter going over sales and special events for customer segments like veterans, law enforcement, first responders and women help to keep your list “in the know.”
Use announcements for promotions and reminders on when sales end. Send quick updates to keep customers in the loop on new product arrivals and in-stock items. Answer common customer service questions in emails for those who are actively looking to purchase your goods and services. Effective emails go beyond likes and comments.
Email marketing is a useful tool to help you reach and reward customers. If you’re on the fence, give email marketing a try. Set up an account with a provider, encourage people to sign up online and in your stores. Then, hit send.
Footnotes
1. blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats
