Mailchimp and the importance of emails
I cannot deny to be a big fan of digital marketing and a fond believer that communication and marketing is largely underestimated in the marine and yachting industry. It is often the case in fact that you go at a boat show see a magnificent product, let’s say, a hand made mahogany wood sail boat, you know one of those vessels that really gives you an idea of hard work, passion for the job, incredible technical skills and countless hours with the utmost attention to details, but then you go have a look at their brochure, or and their website and you think…if only this product was presented better.
I do understand that oftentimes the team of people behind a great vessel has its core skills concentrate on the technical aspects of yacht building and virtually none in the communication and marketing area, which tends to penalise their business resulting in lower on non-existing sales.
Furthermore, boats are non-impulsive purchase decisions even if the prospective customer has the cash in hand, simply because buying a boat requires planning things such as docking space getting the wife to agree and plenty of other elements. So what is the best way to stay in touch with that prospect that has visited the boat at a recent boat show for example. Some might argue that social media will do but it’s arguably not the always the case within a older age group of prospective customers or with customers that conduct particularly busy lives. However, there is one piece of marketing that is inexpensive and that you prospective customers regardless of their age on how busy they are will always see. That piece of your marketing is EMAILS, yes ! the good old emails which are now on everybody’s phone, ipads and at times gets read even more than once (especially if someone has more devices where he/she reads emails from)
Emails are as old as the internet in fact arguably older than the web itself but they are still extremely effective and also constitute long-term value in a company as all prospects that don’t buy today might be buying in the future, and that’s particularly true for boats as they are very often regarded as a very time-intense hobby or an entry in the retirement.
Emails nowadays are not only a form of communication but can be an incentive to generate interaction with other digital assets and non digital occurences such as videos, websites, events, surveys and much more.
They are a way to get to know your audience with time and understand their preferences their habits gathering a plethora of valuable information that will help your business and company refine its marketing and sales strategy.
I have personally tried a variety of tools for email marketing but I have to admit the very best of all is
Mailchimp Logo
MAILCHIMP. It must not be a case as over. 1.5 million businesses are using it every day, and their servers channel through over 1 BILLION emails every day. As you might expect this gives Mailchimp and as a consequence all its users a substantial source of data on how to best build your email. Indeed, MAILCHIMP allows you to test your audience inbox for spam filters, test visualisation on multiple devices, choose the best subject line to for your emails to get more opens or clicks and if you have a very international audience it even allows you to send the emails at a scheduled time that takes into account the time zone of the recipient.
In brief MAILCHIMP is a great tool, it helps you even test which subject line will produce the most emails opened or clicks with an A/B split campaign
You don’t need to believe me you can try it it’s free just click here or on the logo above.
The one feature I like the most about Mailchimp is that it constantly gives you the opportunity to improve by having an industry and list average for open rate and click rate so each campaign you make can be compared to the industry average which is preselected by you and the list average (only if you have done another campaign on the same contact list) See snapshot above of a campaign we ran for a client
If you would like to do a 1 day training session for you or for your team on how to make the most out of email marketing you are more than welcome to contact us.
