By now, I hope you're all capturing email addresses for every guest who comes through your doors, whether purchasing retail, dropping off pre-paid packages, or actually paying you to pack and/or ship something. And, by now, I hope that most of you use those captured email addresses to do periodic email marketing; perhaps some of you even do regular email marketing. Do you find yourself not knowing just how frequently or infrequently you should be sending eblasts out to your contacts? You don't want to be one of those countless companies for which you've unsubscribed because they sent daily emails...and sometimes multiple emails per day. That's just awful and totally ineffective. But you also don't want to not send emails because you know in your gut how effective they can be...when done right. Well, stress no further because I want to share with you what I feel is a secret to success when it comes to email campaigns: the monthly newsletter.
To put it simply, for the businesses my family and I run, we've gotten rid of daily and weekly e-blasts, instead saving content to combine it all into a monthly digest. We thought about this for a long time and looked at the emails we received and what we actually took time to open. We very rarely would open anything from a company that sent weekly or multiple times per week, and we certainly would unsubscribe to anyone who dared send us daily emails. We don't have time for that. Who does? And, if someone is sending out daily emails, rest assured that they're fairly void of any meaningful content.
I talked to my mentor, colleague, BFAM (brother from another mother), and editor-on-retainer, Marty, about this and together we agreed to try a monthly newsletter for my primary business, Island Ship Center, and for our coaching enterprise, AYM High Consultants. The results? Open rates like we've never seen before on email campaigns! Out of over 7,000 recipients for Island Ship Center, we consistently have at least 30% and sometimes over 40% open and click-through rates. And for AYM High, with over 1,000 newsletter subscribers, numbers are similar.
I mentioned in the first paragraph that we capture email addresses for drop-off guests. Did you catch that? We absolutely do and it has been a game-changer. Not only does getting contact information for each drop-off guest allow us to start to build a relationship with them, it also allows us to properly ask the security question and screen each package that comes through our facility for safety and to reduce our liability. (If you don't know about the security question, please see the Ask Uncle Marty™ column in MBC Today volume 23 issue 6 (November / December 2021), as it's essential for every business to be asking anyone shipping or dropping off. The relationships we begin to build by getting contact information from drop-off guests are then reinforced and grown through email marketing and our monthly newsletter, converting countless drop-off guests to regular paying clients.
In our most recent Island Ship Center newsletter, we engaged our community to try to help us name a new wide-format printer and, right away, we had dozens of entries and suggestions. It's important to create an environment where you share authentic stories, feature smiles, highlight community events and team members' accomplishments, and be approachable and real. Don't simply solicit or talk about sales and specials, as that's not going to get engagement like storytelling will. Your guests should be involved in being the heroes of the stories, and we are simply here to assist them and guide them in being the heroes.
Want some examples? Check out the latest newsletters from our businesses, Uncle Marty, and our dear friends and clients, Relay Shipping...and be sure to click the "subscribe" button in the top left of each so you can get future editions in your inbox! There's also a link to past issues for each of the newsletters shared here on the top of each landing page, so you can be sure to read as much as you'd like to get lots of inspiration and ideas.
Island Ship Center: https://mailchi.mp/islandshipcenter/updates-13384014
AYM High Consultants: https://mailchi.mp/aymhigh/monthlynewsletter-9
Ask Uncle Marty™: https://mailchi.mp/0135472945c9/the-second-ask-uncle-marty-newsletter
Relay Shipping: https://mailchi.mp/2283c8d97add/relay-gazette-vol-1
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This article was first published in MBC Today Volume 26 Issue 6 on November 1, 2024.
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Fahim Mojawalla is the Motivation and Mission Lead at AYM High Consultants. He loves what he does and would love to show you how to make 21st century sales and marketing easy, simply by being authentic, appreciative, respectful, responsive, empathetic, collaborative, and all-around awesome. Along with his wife Seema, he is an effervescent co-owner of Island Ship Center, the Spa of Shipping. #FahimFix