At first glance, the festive season appears to be a time to slow down, relax, spend more time with family and friends, and casually bring the year to a close. But the truth is that it’s really an amazing opportunity for you to increase your sales, especially through your email marketing. How? By remembering one simple sentence: your customers want to buy something from you online.
Let’s dig into this.
1 – Your customers want to buy something…
Today, the 24th of November 2017, is a shopping day in South Africa called Black Friday. This is the day where most retailers (especially the ones with an online presence) sell products at unbelievable discounts. As of this morning, most South African sites with Black Friday deals were down. This was mainly due to the amazing demand. People just flocked to those websites and their servers couldn’t handle the load.
In simple language, this means that your customers really want to buy something, especially during this festive season.
That’s what your customers want. And so as a business owner with a product or service to offer, you have an obligation to serve your customers what they want.
2 – Your customers want to buy something online…
Knowing that your customers want to buy something during the festive season, the next thing you need to know is where they want to buy it. The answer to that question is one word: online.
And specifically…via Email.
In a comparison of Email marketing and social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, it was found that:
- Email had a higher open rate than social media (18% vs 1%)
- Email had a higher click-through rate than social media (3.7% vs <1%)
- Email had a higher customer acquisition rate than social media (7% vs <1%)
- Email had a higher lifetime customer value than social media (12% vs -22%)
- Email had a higher ROI than social media (21% vs 15%)
“Transactional emails have 8x more opens and clicks than any other type of email and can generate 6x more revenue.”
In other words, your customers want to buy something online via their email more than they want to receive any other form of communication.
3 – Your customers want to buy something online from you
Once you’ve understood the burning desire that your customer has to buy something online, it’s important to know the more important thing.
Your customer wants to buy something online (via email)…from you.
Yes, you.
When your customer opted-in to your list, she gave you the permission to contact her with messages related to the products and services you provide. Not your competitors, but you. She trusts you and she values what you have to offer.
And so at this time of year when your customer really wants to buy something online, the person she wants to hear most from at this time…is you.
Some businesses make the mistake of viewing their email marketing as an intrusion on their customers’ attention, or as an inconvenience.
But at a time of year when your customer is being bombarded by thousands of messages a day from businesses who don’t have her best interests at heart, haven’t built trust with her the way you have, and aren’t offering anything that’s as valuable as what you have…your customer needs you now – more than ever – to give her something to buy…from you.
So as we enter the festive season, with all the fun and festivities, please embrace the opportunity/obligation to increase your sales by remembering one thing:
Your customer wants to buy something online from you.
