How to Utilize Email Marketing for your B2C Audience
Anyone else still hanging on to the Hotmail or Yahoo account they created in college? Yeah, same. These days, every product we purchase, both online and in-store, asks for your name, address, phone, email, birthdate, SSN, favorite ice cream flavor, and exact location of your first kiss. And then two minutes later, those promotional emails start inundating your inbox. So having a “junk” email to share instead of your main account can come in handy.
But sometimes, the email campaigns that come through are ones you actually want to receive and open. Especially if you frequent a certain brand and they send out occasional discount codes or offers that can save you money. A subject line touting 20% off plus free shipping on your favorite running shoes is too tempting not to click on.
It’s a smart, strategic tactic being used, and it’s called B2C marketing.
What Is B2C Marketing?
Business-to-consumer marketing, known as B2C marketing, is all about communicating directly with the consumers who purchase your goods or services. You want happy customers who are satisfied with the product you sell and will hopefully purchase from you again. So you target them strategically, though paid advertising, social media, VIP memberships, and good ole’ reliable email.
Nothing that pops up in our feeds is accidental – it’s all placed there thanks to fancy and complicated algorithms that are probably created by robots (or our paid media department, whichever you believe more). Businesses pay a pretty penny for those spots, knowing that reaching consumers visually is often the key to gaining sales.
Why is B2C Marketing Important?
From fashion to fidget spinners, desserts to databases, every business relies on marketing to convert casual browsers into paying customers.
Utilizing B2C marketing can lead to serious financial gains, along with several other important benefits, including:
- Improving in search rankings
- Increased visits to your website
- Expanding customer communication
- Growing your email list
- Heightened brand recognition
B2C marketing offers a way to target both your message and your audience, increase subscribers, maximize SEO and fuel engagement, all of which will help improve your conversion rate.
Methods for Utilizing B2C Marketing
Just like you, email may be older and a bit slower, but it’s certainly not outdated. With over 4 billion users, email marketing continues to tower over competitors when it comes to communicating with consumers. There are several effective ways to use email to your advantage when trying to reach your B2C audience.
Email Campaign
Refer back to the beginning, where we mentioned how everyone asks for your personal information when you make a purchase. Sharing your email means you end up on the company’s mailing list, usually whether you want to or not. As a business, having this list allows you to send out mass email campaigns to everyone on it, at the date and time of your choosing.
While you can certainly house the list in an incredibly long Excel spreadsheet, most companies opt to manage it using a third party platform. These systems range from free to expensive, basic to fancy, and the one you choose depends on your budget and overall needs. Nearly all of them will allow you to segment out different sets of customers into categories like age and location. Want to send a marketing message to balding men over 40 who live in Boston? An email campaign is your answer.
Now say that you are hoping to reach brand new subscribers, and really encourage them to buy more or sign up for a promo. Then you’re going to need a…
Drip Campaign
If you think of email campaigns as a generic one-night stand, drip campaigns are all about slowly wooing a potential new mate. Like the name suggests, drip is all about taking your time, reaching out to consumers based on when they are added into your subscriber list. This electronic courtship usually includes emails to welcome new customers, sending out a special offer X amount of days after they sign up, a personalized message from the owner, and so on. Drip marketing is rooted in the idea of reaching the right people at exactly the right time. It’s more nuanced than an email campaign, focusing on nurturing leads instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach.
B2C Email Marketing Options
Whether you choose a wham-bam email campaign, or the methodical drip option, both offer incredible ways to communicate and share information with your B2C audience. The style of email your consumers receive will depend on what you are hoping to accomplish. There are several email tactics you can use to create effective digital marketing campaigns.
Welcome Email – not only is your welcome email the first impression a customer receives, it’s also the one with an 82% open rate, so it’s important to really make it count. Creating a solid message allows consumers to believe in your brand and its authenticity.
Reminder Email – reminder emails are tricky, since they need to walk the fine line of providing a gentle nudge without being super annoying. Crafting a friendly reminder about items left in a cart or a discount that is ending soon takes finesse, so tread lightly.
Newsletter – there are two kinds of people in the world – those who love newsletters and those who don’t. The naysayers will more than likely never open one, so you need to really make yours pop for everyone else. Keep it concise, avoid tons of graphics, and make the information relevant.
Promotional Emails – whether you want to share a discount, special event, or new blog post, a promotional email is the ticket. The key is to make these digital marketing messages timely and targeted, and there is often more success when they are simultaneously paired with a social media campaign.
The Jacob Tyler Approach
If you are still skeptical about taking our word for it… that’s cool, we’re not offended. We’ll let our numbers do the talking for us 🙂 For one of our clients called Pure Ratios, we were able to deliver more revenue in 4 emails compared to the 17 emails that their previous agency sent out. They were averaging about $878 per email before using our services, and are currently averaging $4,000+ per email. We have seen an increased average revenue per email by 475% on the first email campaign.
All in all, we are sending less than half the amount of emails as the previous agency and getting the same total revenue traction. With good strategies, more does not always equal better, and it can all be done without bombarding customer inboxes.
Interested in finding out more? Drop us a line and see how this could be you!