The pandemic impacted everyone, businesses and customers alike. Everyone has felt the effect of lockdown, lists included. Now that governments are lifting restrictions and industries are reopening, email is the perfect solution for reaching out.
ReachMail provides easy-to-understand tools to make reuniting with your audience effortless. To accompany our award-winning software, we've written a personal guide of pitfalls to avoid when announcing your reopening and best practices to maintain afterward.
Don't Call It A Comeback
Your email marketing may have slowed down, but your business is still going strong. Make your reopening seem like an event, and your email is the invitation. Remind customers that your company still has a service or product to provide. Point out what they've missed out on and why now is the perfect time to return.
Reassure Customers
Customers are still wary about their spending habits and entering an establishment after the pandemic. Keep this in mind and focus on how you can offer them what they need in a safe environment. Things have inevitably changed; announce what your business is doing differently in the aftermath. Summarize new safety protocols that can ease them back into their normal spending habits.
Specify Policies & Services
Remind your audience of store hours, payment methods (focus on contactless options if they're available), policies, and services available. If you've made exceptions during the pandemic, make sure to clearly communicate that these services are still being offered or are being discontinued. Finally, include a call to action to get customers to engage. This can be anything from a phone number, email address, or coupon code.
Thank Your Audience
The pandemic was a shared experience that we all suffered on a global scale. Thank your audience for their continued support. A personal touch can go a long way. Leave a good impression and keep your customers engaged in what you have to offer. Humanize your business instead of appearing as a faceless organization. Reopening should feel like an accomplishment, and your first campaign back should emphasize that.
Tidying & Warming Up
ReachMail provides solutions to clean and ramp up your email marketing painlessly. For example, if your company has been idle for 6 months or more, your list has aged twofold due to the pandemic. In addition, people have changed jobs, abandoned email addresses, and more. Therefore, your list should be treated as old even if you've only been away for a short period of time.
Email Hygiene
Quickly and easily maximize delivery. Email hygiene is at the forefront of any successful marketing campaign. However, if you've been mailing less frequently, your first campaign may encounter some issues with increased bounces, complaints, and unsubscribes.
People have abandoned or changed addresses during your inactivity. Therefore, sending to problematic addresses will lower your inbox placement and will dampen the reopening celebration.
Automatic List/IP Warming
If you're a high-volume sender (50,000 or more contacts), you'll want to use our automatic list/IP warming tool. Avoid sudden spikes that could alert email services to abnormal patterns. Consistency is key when sending to a larger list of recipients.
List Segmentation
Resist sending to your entire list. While sending one big campaign and calling it a day is always tempting, your marketing will benefit from planning and segmentation. The first round of emails should be targeted at your previously engaged recipients.