Posts

Sample emails to clients – copy paste and send

/0 Comments/in /by

Emails are one of the most popular platforms when it comes to small businesses communicating with their customers. Nailing this form of communication is extremely important for businesses. Sometimes, however, they approach email from the wrong perspective, sending emails that end up scaring customers away, instead of tightening the bond between the two. On other instance, small business owners don’t have the time or the expertise to draft quality emails for different occasions. With that in mind, we’ve drafted a couple of emails which you can simply copy, paste and send to your customers, when the need presents itself.

Given that you’re most likely community oriented, and almost friends with your clients (we’ll go as far as to say you probably are, with some of them), you do not need to be super formal with your emails. As a matter of fact, it would be much better if you would keep these emails casual and friendly.

Read more →

Awesome Holiday Closing Announcement Email Templates

/0 Comments/in /by

The start of the holiday season does not mean letting your inbox enjoy the same degree of leisure and festivities as you do. Despite being busy with all the buzz and planning, you can hardly lock your business’ door before taking care of what happens with your inbox.

This entails informing your loyal customers about the holiday closure of your business in a clear, informative and (optionally) festive manner. Knowing that holidays can be a busy time of the year, we provide you with several pre-drafted email templates that you can use for announcing the holiday closure for your business.

Don’t Act like Scrooge

Picking the right words for you holiday out-of-office emails can seem like a proper “task”, particularly if you want to be both clear and polite with your message, while sprinkling it with usual phrases about the spirit of holidays. Yet, leaving your customers without this type of message is a big no-no, as it presents you as an unprofessional & sloppy equivalent of the notorious Ebenezer Scrooge. Thus, you need to fire up your email client and announce your absence with style by sticking to the following templates and tips.

The Essentials

Whatever style you may ultimately decide to adopt, each of these emails should feature these essential elements:

  • Precise reference to the period in which you will be away, as the receiver will want to know when they can reach you again. Inform your correspondent about the date by which they can expect to receive a response to the email they send you during the holiday season.
  • Indication that your will reply to the email when they return.

Check Out these examples:

“We hope you that this holiday season finds you enjoying every single minute of it. We are aware that this is the time of the year everyone is looking forward to and we are no different from you in that regard.  Since we hope to spend some quality time with our families and friends, holiday closure period is ahead of us. We hope that you will enjoy the holidays just as much as we will.

We will be closed for [X] days from [DATE] to [DATE] due to the holidays.

Please note that all queries and orders posted at least [X] days before [starting date of the holidays] or during holidays will be processed immediately once we are back at the store.

Please accept our apology for the inconvenience this may cause. We are thankful for your understanding.

We wish you all the best!

Happy holidays!

Thank you.

Yours Sincerely,

[The Sender’s Signature]
Sender’s Name“

*using a professional email marketing solution you can personalize your emails by using your customers’ first name as well as other personalized tokens containing info you have about your customers

Providing optional information

Depending on your idea of holidays as no-business time of the year, you may decide to leave at least one communication channel open, or provide additional information in case of urgent inquiries. In any case, you can add the following information to the mix:

  • You can provide your mobile number, while noting that it can be used only in exceptional situations
  • You can leave contact information of a person that will handle correspondence in your absence
  • You can inform your customers that you will only check emails with “URGENT” in their subject

Let’s check the examples with these optional elements included.

Leaving your mobile phone number:

“Hello!

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of the store on holidays, with no access to email. I will be returning on (insert date).

If you need my assistance before then, you can reach me at my mobile – (Mobile Number).

Thanks!“

Additionally, you can reference a person in charge of your business while you are way:

“Hello,

Thank you for your email. I’m currently out of the store on holidays. I will be returning on [return date].

I greatly value your email and I will read it as soon as I return to my desk. Still, if you require immediate assistance, please get in touch with[Alternate Name] at [alternate email].

All the best to you and your most beloved ones,

[Your Name]“

Including even a passing reference stating that your customer’s email is important to you shows your appreciation for the message that you are currently unable to respond to.

Finally, if leaving a private mobile phone feels like revealing too much, you can instruct your customers to contact you via email with the “URGENT” referenced in its subject:

“Hi (Name),

I am currently out of the store on holidays.We will get back to work on (insert date). If there is something urgent, you can inform me by sending me an email me with the “URGENT” reference in its title and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

I wish you and your family the happiest holidays!

Best,

[Your Name]“

Happy holiday maker
Image Credit: Pixabay

Happy holiday maker

Going beyond being formal and functional with your messages, you can also add a note of festive mood to your email if you feel like being creative. To this purpose, you can adopt a lighter tone, while referencing the holiday in question.

Look at the following example:

“Happy Holidays!!

It’s time for yet another everyone’s favorite period of the year! For me, it means eating as many cookies as possible while gulping down as much mulled wine as possible. Yes, this also means trying to remember every line of dialogue from  [your favorite holiday movie] as my favorite holiday flick

I’ll be back at my desk on [date] and will respond to your message immediately. In case you need urgent assistance, please forward an email to [contact name] at [contact email] so that Santa’s little helpers at our shop may look into it.

Happy holidays!
[Your Name]“

Depending on the type of holiday, you can create specific templates for various holidays such as Christmas Thanksgiving, New Year etc.:

“Hi (specify the name),

Our store will be closed until the end of the week for [Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year]. We are happy to inform you that all of your emails will be answered once we are back on [date].

Kind regards,

[Your Name]“

Final notes

Whatever style you may adopt, it’s still useful to know that some of the general rules apply to all instances:

  • Stay consistent with the preferred communication style, particularly if you go for more creative options
  • Double check for grammar and typos, as your template will be sent to many addresses
  • Do not overdo it in terms of using unconventional style, particularly if you are not sure that it will fall on right ears with some of your customers

Wrap-up

Forgetting to email holiday closing announcements is the best (or worst) way to get off your customer correspondence on the wrong foot. By doing it, on the other hand, you will leave solid impression of a professional who wants to stay on good terms with his/her customers, while showing respect for their role in mutually beneficial cooperation. Using templates can be of great help as a starting point for coming up with informative and stylistically consistent emails that will give you a peace of mind during the holiday season.

How to Use Email Marketing to Grow Your Business

/0 Comments/in /by

Using email on a daily basis has become too commonplace to start perceiving it as an important business tool. Yet, it can become just that with a tweak or two and this post will help you do it in the easiest possible manner.  . Email marketing as a term is self-explanatory – it is about sending emails. But – for the purpose of promoting your business. We will tell you more about email as a tool for connecting with, and nurturing your clients, while building new and reinforcing existing business relations with them.

Build Your Contact List with Promotional Offers

In order to create an audience you’ll have to first obtain their permission to receive emails from you. By acquiring your customers’ emails, your costs of doing so amount to zero, yet you are significantly increasing your reach. If you consider sending them emails before asking for their approval or even against it, you’ll have your emails treated as unwanted spam. Do not despair over having your offer rejected – people who do not want to receive your emails are those who would hardly buy your products/services in the first place.

So, who do you send your emails to? Start with the people visiting your shop, or already using your product. Build your contact list with the help of opt-in forms which represent web users’ confirmation of interest in your service or product, as well as their approval to be contacted in the future for the purpose of receiving new information about your business offers. You can include these with your regular loyalty cards and accompany them with promises of promotional offers, gift ideas and product announcements in exchange for email subscription

These  attractive offers that act as an incentive for people to sign up and ares called lead magnet. They can take many forms, with the limit being your readiness to create attractive content such as a shipping discount offer, promotional video or a coupon for shopping at your store. In this manner, your email recipients will feel that they get something in return for their giving you access to their inbox.

A Most Welcoming Email

You should not underestimate designing a quality welcome email in which you inform your customers that they have been included as part of your email list. This email will have to hit the right nerve with the user upon its first reading, not unlike love at first sight, so make sure not to mess this up:

  • Your welcome email should feature a narrative style that you’ll have to be consistent about. Subscribers will certainly expect some basic information in it, and these should be related to informing them about what content they can expect in your future correspondence and how often they’ll receive updates.
  • Do not forget to include basic information about your store, company or service you provide, together with the descriptions of the most popular products.
  • These emails should also include an invitation to the subscriber to look you up on social media as part of your unified marketing effort.

Send Your Customers emails Upon The Occurrence of Special Events.

Personalization can go SUCH a long way. Pay attention to your customers and seek for excuses to do so. Events that are a good excuse for sending an email could be:

  • Your customer’s birthday or other special event
  • Follow up email after making a purchase – asking for feedback can go a long way
  • Instructions on how to use a product they’ve purchased
  • If you know your main customers well, send them a personal email to update them on new products or services which you think they’ll be interested in. Don’t forget to add that personal touch to those emails.

Take a look at this example of an email which leverages a customer’s personal event:

Subject: [First Name], we have a great offer for you

Hi [First Name],

Happy birthday from all of us at fiction bike store. We’re delighted to offer you 50% off any purchase during your birthday month.

We hope you’re having a super day and are looking forward to greeting you in person.

See you soon!

Sue from Fiction bike store.

OK, Pay Attention But Do Not Swamp Them

One of the key reasons people may unsubscribe from your mailing list is actually their feeling that they are receiving too many emails. According to at least one credible research 45% of subscribers who unsubscribe felt that they were emailed too often. At the same time, you need to decide what constitutes sending mails “too often” as this perspective can be highly individual.

mailining list unsubscribe
Image Credit: Technology Advice

Sending Great Newsletter

Preparing and sending great newsletters is an important component of your email marketing plan. Once again, it is the content and the sending frequency that will decide your ultimate outcomes in this segment.

  • You can start small, by trying to come up with creative email subject lines that will quickly pique your reader’s attention.
  • As for the content itself, it should not be always focused on product promotion or sales pitches. No matter how convinced of the quality of your product you are, people will start ignoring your emails if they find them all too predictable in terms of the content.
  • The best approach to this is to make your newsletter subscribers think that they are actually receiving something from you, be it a promotional offer, gift idea or even relevant research you found online.

Make your newsletters focused on a particular topic. If you try to cover too many themes at the same time, the thread holding its structure together will come undone.

A Personal Touch

Segmentation is the practice of dividing up your email list according to specific categories of the users you want to target. You can segment your email lists into various groups, such age, gender, profession etc. In this manner, you can make your communication better targeted at certain groups of users.

Automate Your Marketing

If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of things you need to juggle in your head, do not give it too much thought, as the good new is that some of these processes can be automatized. Simple marketing automation rules, for example, can be used for sending emails automatically to new subscribers or your regular customers. These can be set to trigger automatically, once a user subscribes to your list, clicks on a particular link, buys from you, or undertakes any other appropriate action. Their content needs to be created in advance and you can also segment specific groups of people from your email list to receive automatic emails based on scheduled time intervals, such as days, weeks or months.

In order to put this to good use, you’ll need a quality email marketing solution that will allow you to group your subscribers, manage your contacts and send emails automatically based on what you determine as your subscriber’s buyer’s journey.  Make sure to check some of the available options before you press forward with any segment of your email marketing campaign.

Wrap-up

You probably send emails on regular basis without considering this service a hidden champion of marketing efforts. Everything starts with making your future subscribers see the value of giving them their email address to you. You need to offer them something of value, accompanied by user-friendly and visually attractive optin form for subscription. Once you include them on your list, you’ll need to balance out your need for self-promotion and their desire for quality content offered by your newsletter.

Segmentation of users into categories can help, together with an effort to make these emails more personal. Finally, much of your efforts can be automated, such as sending welcome or regular emails, which necessitates the use of email marketing services. In any case, do not be afraid of treating email as something more than an equivalent of an electronic messenger pigeon. It can pave your initial steps in the marketing world with pure gold.