This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Please see my full disclosure for further information.
If you’re looking to build credibility for your business, email marketing can be a great way to do it. By sending out regular emails packed with useful information, you can establish yourself as an expert in your field and attract more customers. In this post, we’ll give you some tips on how to get started with email marketing and make the most of it. So read on and start creating those winning emails!
Every marketer’s dream is to send out emails to hot prospects and get a flood of positive responses. And although technology has changed how consumers buy, the human brain hasn’t changed, so this dream is possible.
Our brains respond the same way they did a thousand years ago. This is great for marketers because we can leverage the psychology of persuasion to influence consumers’ buying decisions.
Email marketing is still lucrative because most consumers now regularly access their emails on their smartphones while on the go. And so email is still a preferred form of communication. Having said that, many email newsletters are ignored, or worse – reported as spam.
The key to building a successful email marketing campaign is building trust and credibility. Therefore, your emails need to be relevant, personalized and engaging for them to build trust and credibility. Write your emails like how you would speak to a friend.
Here are five ways to build credibility and trust with email marketing.
1. Set Expectations and Deliver
It’s essential to set expectations in your initial welcome email and opt-in offer. For instance, if you promise to send your subscribers a daily tip email newsletter, you will be consistent with your email marketing and deliver your emails every day. Meeting and exceeding expectations builds credibility both on a conscious and an unconscious level.
The more you keep your promises, the more trustworthy and credible you’ll become. For example, you can say in one email that you’ll be doing a special Q & A webinar where you can answer any questions your subscribers may have. Then hold the webinar, record it and promote the replay to your email list.
Even though most of your subscribers likely won’t watch the live webinar or its replay, they’ll at least know you did what you promised.
2. Deliver on Your Opt-In Offer
Most marketers drop the right ball at the beginning of their relationship with their email list. However, it’s essential to note that if you break the opt-in process, you’ll get started on the wrong foot.
So make sure your links work and deliver what you promised to the best of your ability. And if you want to be sure you’ve done your best, over-deliver in some ways.
3. Make Strong Opinions and Stick with Them
There are many ways to make strong opinions and take strong positions; this will set you apart from the competition. However, it should go beyond branding and positioning.
For example, if you’re a fitness coach and have a strong opinion about the harmful risks of long and slow cardio, subscribers will associate you with this opinion. And those who agree with you will be happy that you stand firm on the issue. However, one way to trash your credibility is by mailing offers that somehow still promote long and slow cardio.
Yes, your position may change over time, but you then have to explain to your subscribers why you’re deviating from your past statements. So don’t be one of those marketers that build a reputation for saying anything that can generate a sale, because your subscribers will learn not to take you seriously over time.
4. Stick to Your Deadlines
Just like any other type of digital marketing, a strict publishing calendar is crucial when you build credibility using email marketing. If you send emails too infrequently, your subscribers will start to forget about you.
There’s no real rule about how many emails to send to your subscribers. Some send one almost every day, some send an email blast once a week. It takes trial and error to see which is the right amount of emails to send for you.
And don’t worry if you get a lot of unsubscribes, it just means they are not your target audience. The ones that stay on your list, are your target audience.
Also, remember that if you tell your customers that you’re having a five-day sale on your most popular products or that a special offer disappears after three days, you’ll trash your credibility if you blow the deadline off.
5. Be Careful with What You Promote
You don’t want to have customers unsubscribing from your email list because you keep bombarding them with promotional emails, especially if their expectation was to receive more valuable content. Nevertheless, the purpose of an email marketing strategy is to promote your products or services.
By being selective with what you promote depending on factors like product views, past purchases and wish lists will make you more appealing to your target customers. So, personalize your emails in a way that makes subscribers feel you value them as individuals rather than email addresses in an endless list.
Another way to help with this is using tags with the email marketing tool you are using. For example, if you are promoting a product for a period of five days, you can have a message that says “if you purchased this product already you can click here to opt-out of this promotion”. They will still be on your email list but they will be tagged that they already have the product or are not interested in that product and you know not to promote it to them.
Conclusion
Because of the huge amounts of spam around the web, consumers are becoming increasingly wary of to who they give their email addresses. And attention spans and patience are more limited than ever before, so you need to prioritize subscriber experience and offer relevant content if you want to build credibility and a positive brand through email marketing.
Do you use email marketing in your business? Or are you struggling with what to send to your email list? Kat Doster has a lot of great tips and ideas on what to send to your email list.
Related posts:
