This is how you Promote your Products, Services or Events in your Email Signature
There are many reasons to promote something in your email signature. The best way to explain the power of email signature promotion is with an example. Lets say you own a company with 25 staff members, and these staff members all send out on average 10 emails per day to external parties outside of your company. This is 250 opportunities per day to market your products or services in their email signatures. This is a huge opportunity that you probably shouldn’t just be brushing off to the back of your list of things to do.
We have compiled a short video that describes what impact a good email signature can have on your business.
The biggest surprise here should be that half of all professionals don’t use an email signature. Why don’t they use an email signature? We don’t know either, but that is what we are trying to change. This is why we are spending so much time trying to make the best product on the web for making email signatures, because we realize the importance of a good email signature and the impact it can have on a business’ marketing efforts.
Products and Services
Which products or services should I promote in my email signature?
Take a look at the products and services that you sell in your business. You should already know what the most popular products or services are, and you should also know who buys them (demographic) and where they buy them from (geographical location). The more you know about your customers, and how they purchase from you, the better. For example, can you see a pattern or trend in regards to seasonal purchases? Do your customers buy more gloves and beanies in the winter season than in summer? This is an obvious example, but it is an important one.
Find out what your customers want, when they want it, how they want it and where they want it. Even if you can get basic statistics of these things, this will greatly improve your click through rate (CTR) in your email promotions which will of course amount to more success in your marketing campaign.
Here are the most popular items to include in your email promotions:
- Items which come onto the market quickly and fade from the market just as quick (eg. fidget spinners)
- Seasonal items such as Christmas tree’s, stockings and nativity sets at Christmas time.
- Items to compliment your most purchased items. For example, if your most purchased items are watches, then perhaps you should promote a watch cleaning kit or service in your emails.
Get Creative!
An email signature is not only used as a tool to display your information and promote your products. You might not want to sell products or services in your email signature, you might just need some information from your customers and don’t know how to get it. There is nothing worse than getting an email asking you to complete a survey. Its nothing more than just spam and the people sending you the survey just blatantly want your information for nothing. It is a fact that your customers don’t want to be annoyed with surveys or doing things that waste their time. I have never met a single person who has said that they are getting excited about completing a survey. After all, you don’t go to work because you want to, you go because you need to feed yourself and your family. The same reason applies to people completing your survey, why should they? However, if you get creative with your marketing techniques, you can actually pull this off, and this is how.
Give Something Back!
We aren’t talking about fishing, your customers should get something in return for their time. For example, lets say you own a car detailing business, and you want to know a bunch of things from your customers, such as “How much would you pay for a full car detail?” or “Do you prefer your car detailed at home, or by taking it to a workshop?”. If you design your promotional banner in a way that draws the readers attention and you promise them a product in return for completing your survey, their ears will instantly perk, and your conversion rate will be much higher than if you don’t give away a product in return. Here are the steps:
- Work out what you want to know from your customers, or potential customers. This step is important because if you get this wrong, it will be a big waste of time.
- Decide what each completed survey is worth to you, and what you are willing to pay for it.
- Prepare your survey using a survey provider, and make sure not to ask too many questions.
- Create a banner using Photoshop or any image editing software, which has a link to the survey and also shows the readers that if they complete the survey, they will get your free product that you have chosen. Make sure you include delivery details for your product in the survey, otherwise you wont know where to send the product once they complete the survey.
- Insert your banner into your email signature and test that it all works. For this step you can use Gimmio, or you can create the email signature by coding it yourself.
- Watch the completed surveys flow in!
In the car detailing example above, you might give away a free cut & polishing kit for every completed survey. This might not cost you a lot, but it will get you answers to your questions and also tell the person completing the survey that you care. This might also give you an opportunity to engage with new customers and also build trust with them.
Events
How do I promote an event in an email signature?
A well executed event can drive valuable business and help build trust between your brand and your customers or potential customers. Similar to products and services, promoting an event is fairly simple once you know what is needed.
As usual, a few points you should address first:
- What is the point of the event? You need to know this, so your email promotions can have targeted and specific messages in them, for a better conversion rate, or CTR.
- Who is your target audience for the event? Do you want existing customers at the event, or do you want to try and get new customers from the event? Do you want people who are single to attend, or people who are in a relationship? Is your event better suited to a particular age group?
- How are you keeping track of who is attending? There are many event organizing applications available. Many people use Facebook to track events as it is the easiest method.
When you create your email marketing banner or message, you could include a link to your event page so they can register as an attendee. This helps keep track of numbers and also allows others to see how many people are also attending.
Spice it up!
Just like the example we used above when promoting a survey, you want to add some spice to your marketing efforts. For example, adding a prize draw at your event would be a perfect example of this. This not only builds trust, but also grabs the attention of the recipient of the email.
Lets take a look at 2 examples of the wording used to promote an event. Which event do you think would get more participants:
“Come to our annual Product Expo where we will showcase our newest diving technology”
“Win a dive mask, oxygen tank and regulator, worth over $800. Come to our Product Expo, and you will get a free dive mask cleaning kit at the door.”
It is quite easy to see which wording would convert better, and the reasons as to why it would convert.
In conclusion, if you aren’t using email signatures to promote your products, services or events, you could be missing out on a lot of additional sales or exposure for no additional ongoing effort on your behalf. The email signature might take an extra 5-10 minutes to set up when you include a promotion, but the benefits are definitely worth it.
It works, try it.
