Sometimes we all sit down in front of the computer monitor getting ready to create an email marketing campaign and we're stuck. We don't know where to begin but we know we need to, because every time we write about something interesting, we end up reminding our customers why they liked us in the first place. I've written about writer's block before, but I thought more ideas would be great to get those creative juices flowing.
1. Create Your Own Stimulus Package.
I talked to the owner of Perry's Restaurant here in San Francisco who is giving away half price bottles of wine on his slow days, any bottle. He said it's working great for him. Now he's getting people in the door on what used to be slow nights and they're staying longer.
In a cursory check around the net, I've seen stimulus packages for tires, lingerie, jewelry, consultants, maternity wear and more. What are you waiting for?
2. Declare Your Own Holiday
- Nurseries - Plant a Tree Week - Give Back to the Environment.
- Spa/Hotel - Family Celebration Week - Offer activities around families from food to fun.
- Brew Pubs - A local brew pub here 21st Amendment declares the month of February Strong Beer Month where they offer hearty beers. They do it in the Winter month of February and they hype it in their pub, on their site and in their email newsletter. The place gets packed. They also had their own parade where they marched through the city on the day that prohibition was repealed and had a hundred people follow them down the street. That stunt created some real buzz and was picked up in the local media. It made a great story for their next email campaign.
3. Create a White Paper, Guide or Industry Report
White papers and guides can be great for B2B companies looking to promote their services to an industry. Create a guide of or white paper of a real world problem and how it's solved by your solutions. Since you are an expert at what you do put on paper and tell the world about it. Ok, maybe not the world but at least your email recipients.
4. Create an "Ask The Expert" Column
You can have a feature in your campaign where you probe your recipients to "Ask the Expert", CNN Money does a good job of this on their site. Then you can use that answer in your next email campaign, but always be soliciting more questions so you'll have content in the future. You can also come up with a question you get asked a lot about your industry, products or services, and make up a fake person who is asking the question. These can be useful especially if you will proactively answer some customer questions they may have down the road.
5. Create Your Own Customer Award
Do you have long time customers you'd like to reward? Why not have your own company awards. It can be as simple as sending them an email campaign, thanking them for their business. You'll want to define the criteria for your award, create a name for it and an image that they can proudly place on their site. It can be a great buzz-generator and who knows, your customers might tell 10 friends that they got your award which could turn into 10 new customers for you!
Got any other ideas for why you should send an email campaign? Bring it on!
Good stuff, Janine. Good ideas, original or not, are hard to come by. Which is why so much of winery communications is so similar, so irrelevant and so ineffective.
Today's preoccupation with the tools (blogs, facebook, twitter, etc.) overlooks the vital need for compelling content. When everyone has access to these sorts of communications tools, clutter results, and the novelty of the medium wanes.
A brand -- as opposed to a mere label -- stands for something. Until wineries figure out what their Thing is, it's very difficult to create effective content beyond simple promotions.
Posted by: Fred | April 21, 2009 at 09:41 AM