GETTING STARTED WITH EMAIL

If you’re going to invest some of your time each week into digital marketing for your business, then email is a great place to start. Philip Montague looks at some of the key pointers to improve your overall email game.

IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK -SUTTHIPHONG CHANDAENG

Some 99% of consumers, the people buying your products and services, check their emails every day, while 59% of consumers prefer to get a promotional email weekly and 47% of consumers have made a purchase because of email marketing. According to the Digital Marketing Association, the average return on investment for email in 2023 was 1:42, so every £1 spend created £42.

Despite all of these statistics, few people in the shooting industry use email to regularly promote their business, and few do it well.

EMAIL WITH INTENT

An email can result in an action taken. You need to figure out what actions might result from your emails that would make it worth your time.

As an example, I’ve seen some incredible offers coming out of the Purdey at the Royal Berkshire Shooting School recently. One hundred birds and a burger or hotdog for £54 in the evening. An hour-long lesson during the day is a lot more. This is a clear message; we’d like you here on a Thursday between 4pm and 7pm. And it worked, I went.

Consider what value you have to share with your audience. Here are some ideas that I’ve seen, and that I believe are useful:

• If you’re open late, let people know

• When a popular item finally comes back into stock

• When certain kinds of ammunition arrive

• When an unusual or popular gun comes into stock

• If you’re closed unexpectedly

• When there are traffic problems or diversions nearby

• An offer that’s time specific for a period when you’re quiet normally

• An offer on something you’ve been holding in stock too long

• Dates for a new competition

• Sharing your expertise in something your customers care about

Now ask this: if I invested the time and energy to do this right, and some people acted on the email I send, how many people would I need to take the action, and would that make it worthwhile?

Finally, send an email with this purpose, measure the results and decide for yourself if it was a valuable use of time. Remember that doing it will get faster and easier with time.

COLLECTING EMAIL ADDRESSES

Now that you know what value you have to share it’s a lot easier to collect email addresses. All you need to do is ask the people you do business with. Please can I have your email address so we can let you know when [insert value for your customer] ?

RECORD THEIR PERMISSION

There are laws around processing personal information that absolutely apply to your business. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an EU regulation that was retained in domestic law as the UK GDPR. It includes a threshold that you must meet to use someone’s email address for promotion, and requirements that you must meet to help that person manage the data you hold about them.

ONE THING TO CHECK

About the Information Commissioners Office. If you’re only processing personal information like names and email addresses for staff administration, advertising or marketing your own business to customers, and record keeping for accounts, you won’t need to register with the ICO. There is a self-assessment tool on their website to be sure. It’s not well written so read it carefully. It’ll take about 10 minutes: ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protectionfee/data-protection-fee -self-assessment

You can find the guide here: ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidanceand-resources

THE BEST FREE SIMPLE TOOLS

MailerLite

One user, 12,000 emails a month, a drag and drop editor, 10 landing pages and sign up forms for up to 1,000 subscribers is free. Best if you’re starting out and want to build a good looking email to send to your customers.

MailChimp

One user, 1,000 email sends per month, basic email templates, landing pages and sign up forms for up to 500 subscribers is free. Best if you’re looking for something familiar for your customers as MailChimp is quite widely recognised. All these platforms include their logo in your emails unless you’re paying for a subscription.

Brevo

One user, 300 email sends per day, a drag and drop editor, no landing pages for up to 100,000 subscribers is free. Best if you just need to email a large contact database.

HubSpot

Easily the best of these tools, even for free, but also the most complicated to navigate. HubSpot has a complete CRM, email, automation, content and customer service modules. It includes forms, integrations, landing pages, lists and more, but all with limits for the entry level plan.