Email marketing may sound fancy, but at its heart, it’s all about building a relationship with your clients or potential clients. It’s used for lead generation, sales, lead nurturing, and customer retention — all of which are important for small businesses. This is why we’re sharing 5 types of emails wedding pros should be sending.
Why are these 5 types of emails important for you to know about?
Because you own your email list — unlike your social media accounts, you have complete control over your emails and aren’t subject to the changing winds of algorithms. As a result, email builds customer loyalty, and that leads to more consistent sales. Plus, these will help you add value and contribute to your clients while increasing your ability to make sales without having to nurture every single lead yourself individually.
Sound good? Let’s get started.
EMAIL MARKETING STATS WEDDING PROS NEED TO KNOW
Many wedding pros overlook email as a way to reach local couples because they think “my list isn’t big enough.” But did you know, on average, email marketing has an average ROI of 122%? This means the size of your list doesn’t really matter. If you’re consistently emailing 5 people, that’s 5 opportunities to connect with customers down the road.
Stats About Email Marketing
Before we jump into the 5 emails wedding pros should be sending, let’s cover some basic email marketing stats for 2021. Now, you could likely be serving couples from Gen Z as well as Millennials and Gen X’ers. Unfortunately, many people think that the younger generations don’t use email, far from true.
- Email is 40% better at converting than Facebook or Twitter. (Snovio)
- Welcome Emails have a 90%+ open rate, according to Hive Co. (Snovio)
- 90% of people would rather get updates from a business via email vs. social media. (Snovio)
- 80% of people opt-in to email lists specifically for special deals, coupons, and more. (This doesn’t mean you have to have coupons or discount your services, but special offers or upsells are a must.) (Snovio)
- 62% of marketers say that personalization is the most effective technique they’ve used. (Snovio)
- Gen Z (Under 23 years old) gets significantly fewer emails on average, so they are open to a higher frequency, such as a few times a week even. (Campaign Monitor)
- Mobile optimization is crucial for reaching Gen Z and Millennials with email marketing, with 85% saying that is key to making a purchase. (Campaign Monitor)
- 60% say free delivery and special offers would make them decide to purchase via email. (Campaign Monitor)
- 90% of millennials check their email multiple times a day, and nearly 60% of Gen Z’ers do the same. (Campaign Monitor)
- Emails with emojis in the subject show a 56% higher open rate. Women react more positively than men. (Campaign Monitor)
- Attaching a video in an email can lead to a 200-300% increase in click-through rate. (Snovio)
5 TYPES OF EMAILS WEDDING PROS SHOULD BE SENDING
1. Confirmation Email
There are two reasons to send confirmation emails for wedding pros. First, someone has asked for a quote, or someone has subscribed to your email list. When someone subscribes to your email list — it’s a big deal. You are starting a new phase of your relationship, and it deserves a corresponding sense of gravitas. If it’s a quote request or something for more information, you can’t answer every email right away, but with an automated confirmation email — it’s like you can.
Confirmation for a Quote or Information Request
This confirmation email should be automated to go out immediately and let the client know that their question is important and that you will get back to them right away. It’s even good to set a sense of expectation for when they will likely hear back from you. However, it’s crucial here not to over-promise and under-deliver on your timeline, so be realistic.
This is a good opportunity to share some little-known things or insider tips about your service that they might have missed on your website. Or, you can highlight what previous clients have said about your service.
“Thank you for requesting more information. We’re gathering all the answers for you. While you wait, head to your inbox to see what previous clients have to say about our services.” Or something similar.
Confirmation for Subscribing to Your Email List
Don’t just settle for the template “Thank you” pop-up that most email services have. It’s important to train your new subscriber to expect good things in their inbox from your company.
Have a prompt to have them head to their inbox to confirm their subscription. Then, send a branded confirmation email with a next-step prompt to confirm their subscription.
Image Courtesy of Send Pulse
2. Welcome Email or Series
On average, the Welcome Email gets 4x higher open rates, 5x higher click-through rates, and often see more than 3x the transaction rates over a regular promotional email.
What does all that mean? Welcome Emails are important to your bottom line — as well as to the future of your relationship with this new subscriber.
Welcome Emails are a good opportunity to —
- Educate subscribers about your services, your story, and make a personal connection with an audience that is highly attentive at the moment.
- Show subscribers how to get the most out of your service/content and more.
- Give them a second call to action. They have just taken one step. Don’t stop now — give them a second step while they are engaged and interested. Make sure it’s something valuable like directing them to valuable content, giving a special offer, or getting them to follow you on social — or invite a friend.
Here’s an example of Vimeo taking new subscribers to the next level by encouraging them to keep engaging with their service.
Image Courtesy of Automizy
You may not have as involved a process as Vimeo, but think through what your desired “next step” would be for this customer and create your own call to action.
A Welcome Series may be best for your business. It allows you to keep things simple and trickle your content over the course of a few days to a few weeks.
3. Winback Emails
Put simply, a WinBack Email is winning a subscriber back that hasn’t engaged with your emails in a while.
Here’s why it’s important to do WinBack Emails —
- Inactive subscribers hurt the health of your email list. It doesn’t help to have big numbers if hardly any of them are opening or engaging. However, that doesn’t mean it’s time to delete everyone. A good rule of thumb is to have a WinBack series go out every 90 days to people who haven’t opened any emails in those 90 days. Some experts recommend more, but the wedding industry often has unique timelines.
- This is an opportunity to find out why they aren’t opening any emails. Do they not like the content? Are they not in need of those services currently? Even if they are already married, that doesn’t mean they won’t need a florist or photographer, or venue in the future. This is where innovation happens. You can segment your list and start sending content to clients who are past the engagement phase.
- You can increase your sales by creating a special WinBack offer. This helps you re-engage a potentially lost audience as well as increase your bottom line.
Here is an example of a cleverly crafted WinBack email —
The benefit of this WinBack email is that it also helps GrubHub learn just why the subscriber is disengaged.
In many cases, it’s recommended to do a multi-part WinBack series to give people enough time to decide.
4. Review Request Emails
Your customers aren’t going to review you unless you ask. At least, not the majority of customers. And asking isn’t a bad thing. But, remember, you’re asking these people to be the expert and share their insights.
Image Courtesy of Really Good Emails
Types of Review Email Requests —
- The review request could be a simple follow-up to gather information internally via survey.
- A reminder to share help get the message out by reviewing your company on Google and social media platforms.
- Asking customers to review them directly on their social platforms like the example below. (This uses word-of-mouth in the first degree and can help get positive exposure for your company.)
Image Courtesy of Omnisend
Could you use more positive reviews for your wedding business? Check out Tactics to Get More Glowing Reviews.
5. Referral Emails
If you have engaged email readers, don’t miss getting them to be ambassadors for your brand. It’s as simple as sending a Referral Email out to subscribers who open a lot of your emails.
There’s no pressure. Make it something that benefits the sender as well as the recipient — for even better results. Plus, this is the beginning of a loyalty program.
Image Courtesy of Get Ambassadors
EMAIL MARKETING REMINDERS FOR WEDDING PROS
When it comes to email marketing, don’t wait to start until your list reaches a certain magic number!
- Just start somewhere.
- Offer consistent, regular, dependable emails with helpful content.
- Work on building your subscriber list gradually, so when it does come time to make a sale, you’re in front of the right people.
Wondering where to start? Here are a few quick tips from @wedsociety on Instagram. (Be sure to follow for more helpful tips and inspiration.)
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Written by Corrie McGee
