You may have seen your fair share of emails over the years, especially designed from brands targeted to your inbox. What you may not see is the extensive planning, analysis, targeting, testing and ideas that go into creating that one campaign.

Here at Unity Online, we have started to see an increase in local companies wanting to utilise this channel more effectively. We’ve had several inquiries seeking more information about where to start and what our process is, so I’ve put together this post to explain more into the work that goes into creating an advanced email program.

Some of the key benefits of email for small local businesses

1. Great for maintaining a communication with your clients/customers
2. Share updates relevant to the customer
3. Advertise for last minute services and target by location
4. Tie in with social media activity
5. Collect good reviews (and even deter bad ones)

When would it be a good time to start using email as a marketing channel?

From the beginning. There is a misconception that email is just for companies with big lists of data, though actually with the ability to talk to your customers on a 1 to 1 level and making them feel important, is one of the big benefits. Starting early actually gives you a head start as you can plan for the communications you want your customer to be a part of. For example:

Customer books MOT/opts in > Receives welcome email and booking information> Receives unique reminder about their upcoming service this month > Gets SMS reminder a day before service > Gets thank you email and reminder for review/ follow on socials for offers > Occasional offers for servicing throughout year> Reminder month before MOT due

It’s never too late or early to start thinking about email.

Whether you have one customer or 200, a optimised email program is achievable when you know what data you want to collect from the beginning. If you decide at 2,000 customers that you need more data for each customer to be able to provide a relevant communication, then it is still possible but it is a lot less likely that you will capture this for every user.

How do I go about including email in my services at Unity Online?

Talk to you account manager about whether or not they would recommend utilising email for your company. There will be very few cases where it won’t be considered a worthwhile channel. From here we would create a strategy document considering all marketing activity and where we think email could sit and recommend relevant services.

So you know that we deliver a tailored service, a sample process could look like this:

• Goal setting
• Data audit
• Content planning and schedule
• Template design and sign off
• Email build and content creation
• Campaign creation and scheduling
• Campaign analysis and reporting
• Assert findings to future campaigns

Get in touch today and begin making the most of your contact list.