The last six weeks have been difficult no matter what your position in business is or has been. You just graduated? Difficult time to find a job. You just bought a business? You are hopeful but timing is scary. You are an essential business? Good news but you are doing 20% of normal business with fewer employees, same overhead and an uncertain future. You are not essential and you've been closed? Running out of money and you weren't one of the businesses who were able to secure payroll protection. You are a stong, solid business who will weather the storm? Things might look different when things are back to normal. No matter where you are, you should have thought or quickly be pivoting to what you will be not what you are or have been. It's a great time to make those changes you've been afraid to make or haven't had time to make. You may find yourself with a lot of ideas or no ideas at all so the best thing to do is find someone who can help you narrow down your focus and build out at least a six-week plan. It may not be plan A but make a plan that will get you to plan A. If you have a marketing firm or someone who can help you, then employ them to help you build an idea and look at things objectively. I know we have clients that call us in times like this and say..." I need help, what should we be doing?"
One thing you can do is take a look at your past KPI's pre-Covid and take a look at them now. Let's focus today on your email marketing in a really simple way. If you typically send out e-mail campaigns then take a look your key performance indicators in your campaigns. Some will have more data available to drill down but let's focus on the easiest and primary indicators. Total number of e-mails sent, open rate, unsubscribes and response rate or revenue generated. We would probably all assume that with people staying home, there would be a little bit of a shift from mobile devices to PC's or desktops or at least a shift from phones but it seems that is not the case. I guess we are all creatures of habit. Think about how you use email and you can assume that you are not that different. People have been at home, probably more engaged in email but not necessarily spending more. Pay attention closely to which of your campaigns have received more engagement. Is it videos, discounts, coupons or educational e-mails.
If you have not done an e-mail campaign in the past, pull your team together and brainstorm. What would your clients appreciate? What are you trying to accomplish? Use these questions for your brainstorm session:
- What do we want to accomplish?
- Do we want to just stay in front of our clients? Build awareness?
- Do we want to educate them?
- What do we need to let them know?
- Can we offer them an incentive to do business with us?
- Are we handing business differently?
- Do we need to introduce new employees or a new learning series?
Your plan may be a softer " we care about you " approach or it may be one of excitement like " We can't wait to see you again!". Start your plan out with a clear goal and you'll stay on track. Next you need an action plan on who will create the content, the artwork and how will you track it? There are many companies like ours that can create and help you execute your plan if you don't have the software and tools to do it. Next, who will own the tracking and sharing of results on your team and what is the follow-up plan. Last, set some dates for implementing and the final push of the e-mail campaign. Without clear action items and timelines, I assure you six weeks will have flown by or you'll never get around to it. Hold your team accountable for making it happen. It will take focus but start with just one thing. It doesn't have to be e-mail, it may be direct mail or a digital newsletter.... we'll talk about that next. I'd like to hear your comments and let me know what you might like to know more about. There are lots of resources for doing e-mail marketing and we are only one of many. Call us if we can help or offer advise or help you lead a team brainstorming session. We are here for you.