Email Marketing During the Crisis: Tips and Tools to Help Your Business Keep Afloat

As we are moving further and deeper into the economic crisis caused by the ongoing spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus, businesses are learning to adjust to the changed circumstances, trying to stay afloat.

Over the past few weeks, one communication channel has proven to be particularly valuable for keeping in touch with customers — emails. According to some data, the number of email opens has increased by nearly 30% in comparison with the pre-quarantine times.

Since the lockdown has been enforced, people are spending more time online, looking for updates on the current situation. This also concerns emails, hence the increase in the number of open messages.

So, even with many small businesses having to struggle for survival, email marketing can be a way to mitigate the damage or at least ensure that your customers will remain loyal to your company once this nightmare is over.

However, it should be clear that running the same email marketing campaigns you did before the pandemic broke out won’t have the intended effect anymore. You need to review your approaches and practices in order to adapt to the present state of affairs. For this purpose, we’ve prepared a few essential tips to get you started.

4 TIPS ON ADJUSTING YOUR EMAIL MARKETING IN THE TIME OF CRISIS

Tip #1: Keep on Advertising Your Goods or Services but Lengthen Time Intervals Between Campaigns

It may seem that trying to entice customers to purchase your merchandise in a critical time like this makes no sense. People are more concerned about getting the basic necessities than about buying fancy clothes or having their pets groomed.

However, think ahead. The lockdown will end sooner or later. When life returns to normal, you would have to make twice as much effort to identify your active customers and engage them than if you didn’t put promotional operations on hold.

Instead of pushing the ‘stop’ button, review the intervals between your campaigns and make them longer. When people resume their before-quarantine routines, you can reduce those intervals. By that time, you’ll have an up-to-date customer base without those who have rejected your emails or haven’t opened them at all.

Tip #2: Make Sure Your Templates Reflect the Latest Changes in Your Operation Mode

It’s essential to take good stock of all your email templates and automated messages. They should now contain information about your current status. For example, if a template lists your brick-and-mortar retail store address and opening hours while you’re closed for the lockdown period, let your customers know you’re currently unavailable physically. You can also inform them how they can reach out to you if you can accept orders online.

It’s a good idea to make a completely new template specifically for this time of inactivity/slow activity. Email automation software like Campaign Monitor or MailChimp allows you to build templates in an editor.

However, a new “crisis” template should be unique and as engaging as possible so that your company can have an advantage in the fight against competition, which is growing fiercer by the day. That’s why we recommend hiring professional email template developers like GetDevDone experts to guarantee yourself the maximum effectiveness of your campaigns.

Tip #3: Be Especially Careful With Subject Lines

We’ve been talking about the virus since late last year. Most people are tired of hearing the words “pandemic” or “COVID-19.” This is why some experts say that using these “unpleasant’ words in the subject line is a surefire way for emails to land in the junk box.

Begin the subject line with what you can offer your target audience. Be very selective with your words, trying to avoid those we’ve mentioned above and giving preference to the likes of “discount,” “free shipping,” “home,” and similar. They may entice recipients to open the email.

In this respect, A/B testing acquires a particular significance. For this purpose, we recommend Campaign Monitor. You can use it to A/B test all the aspects of your email: the subject line, content, layout, and send time. This will enable you to fine-tune your email marketing campaigns, which is especially important now.

Tip #4: Try to Get Closer to Your Audience and Show Them Empathy

Apart from purely promotional emails, consider conducting social email campaigns as well. Restricted by the lockdown, people are eager to receive news from you. So, just talk to them through emails as if you were talking with your friends. Show your empathy toward them and describe your own feelings.

Update customers on the latest events in your business and overall. Make your messages personalized. You can achieve this by addressing recipients by their names in the subject line. Both Campaign Monitor and MailChimp are very flexible when it comes to dynamic content, so you can take advantage of these tools.

In addition, ask your target audience questions about their current preferences. This gives you better insight into what they like and how your business should react. Conducting a survey is a good way to learn what your customers think.

MailChimp provides an excellent survey that you can easily fill out with several types of questions and send to your subscribers. You can also customize it to match your brand style.

While it’s possible to achieve that right inside MailChimp, professional email template developers will take it a step further and make it both visually appealing and convenient. This will guarantee the maximum engagement of your customers.

TO SUM UP

Email marketing has always been an efficient method to promote goods and services. Despite the present crisis, this advertising medium can make the virus’ blow less painful and help businesses retain their customer base and prepare for better times ahead.

While running the same types of campaigns is no longer as effective as before, marketing experts believe that stopping them altogether is counterproductive, and businesses still need to run them with some adjustments.

Intervals between campaigns should become longer. Information in templates should correspond to the current situation. Email marketers should be very selective with words they use both in the subject line and message body. In addition to promotional emails, there should be human-centered letters with news and questions to the target audience.

Whatever changes to the text of emails you make, though, it’s their look and feel that can be truly decisive. Make it unique, brand-specific, and visually appealing — and your chances to engage customers increase significantly.

However, it’s not just the design that matters. A promotional email must be well-tested in all major browsers and email clients as well as on various devices and operating systems.

Only professionals can guarantee the highest quality like that.

The GetDevDone email template development experts are here to help your business communicate with customers effectively during these challenging times. We’ll tailor your email to match your brand and seamlessly integrate it with all email marketing services including Campaign Monitor and MailChimp discussed in this post.

Contact us. We’ll help you with advice and put your ideas into practice.