Email marketing offers an enormous potential to grow business, but knowing exactly how to operate a campaign is a real challenge. While working with Reptile Encounters, Salt & Fuessel completed a full email marketing campaign that included everything from designing different email templates as necessary to sending out the campaigns, setting up autoresponders, split testing, and reporting.
The email templates covered three different areas. The first was sales which followed the style of an intro paragraph with a call to action, a main text with a picture for the body of the email, and finally a custom signature and footer. The next area was informational emails with a style similar to that of the sales template. The third and final area was a newsletter-style email broken into three sections, an introduction and two articles with pictures.
Workflow Emails
Workflow emails also help with the sales process. Implemented automatically, this type of email is sent out when triggered based on different events. For example, when someone goes through the booking form on the webpage to schedule an event but does not complete the process, then the appropriate email goes out to that person. The person has expressed interest, but perhaps needs some more information before making a final decision.
Because the average decision time from the first enquire to booking averages two weeks for Reptile Encounters, setting up two or three automated emails not only overcomes key barriers to proceeding, but also keeps them in the front of the person’s mind when they are making the decision.
When working with Reptile Encounters, the different workflow emails created included emails triggered from a booking enquiry (three emails over two weeks), contact forms that confirm receipt of emails and inform the person that they will be responded to within 24 hours, post-show emails requesting feedback and a testimonial, and specific link clicks. Specific link click emails go out when someone triggers them by clicking on a video, click on a certain link or looks at a certain picture.
Campaign Emails
Salt & Fuessel also sends out specific campaign emails to drive sales. The idea with campaigns is to segment your list and send campaigns to specific groups of people. The more targeted you can make the message, the more effective the results. Here are some specific examples of campaign emails we provided for Reptile Encounters:
- December Offer – Because December is a slow period, we offered a discount to shows booked in this month. The emails targeted primary and secondary schools, as well as kindergartens.
- Start of Term Offer – Teachers often do the bulk of their planning at the start of the month. Sent to primary schools, secondary schools, and kindergartens, these Reptile Encounters emails are strategically sent out at a time that works best with the teachers’ planning schedules.
- Corporate Christmas Events – Another way that we drive December sales is to reach out to corporate clients with offers of Christmas shows. These emails are sent to the corporate in Reptile Encounters’ email list and explain that the Christmas programs are a great way to treat employees and their families during the holiday season.
Video – We had a wonderful video produced that shows Reptile Encounters in action. Everyone in the full email address list received a copy.
Newsletter Emails
Newsletters are a great way of keeping everyone on your email list up to date with the latest happenings and special offers. The trick is to focus on the exciting things taking place each month without making the content sound too much like a sales pitch. Reptile Encounters’ newsletter emails frequently highlight items of interest such as news and photographs about recent programs, upcoming special offers, and information about the animals they might see at an event.
Testing for Optimal Effectiveness
Throughout any type of email marketing campaign, we continually use A/B testing for maximum effectiveness. Testing helps Salt & Fuessel send out the best emails possible, because it provides a way for us to work out the best language to use to grab the attention of clients and customers, like subject headings and calls to action. Testing also helps us work out the most effective time to send out the emails. When the right words combine with the right timing, the result is an email that is guaranteed to maximise sales potential.
