4 Email Marketing Must-Do’s for Self Storage Promotion

Despite the rise of Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, email marketing is not dead. Actually, it’s one of the most effective online marketing tools available.

How To Build An Effective Email Campaign?

Create Your Mailing List

If you don’t have a mailing list, start by building one. You can do this by buying email addresses, or by inviting customers to sign up to your mailing list. Each approach has its pros and cons.

When you buy email addresses, you can build the size of your mailing list very quickly. However, these emails may not have been vetted appropriately. Depending on who created the list, it may not be the right target market, and may also expose you to legal problems. Since the advent of GDPR and other local privacy laws, sending emails without prior consent from the client exposes you to potential fines and lawsuits.

A better, but slower, way to build a list is to drive users to your website and have them register to a mailing list by offering them something of value (like a signup discount) in exchange for their contact information.

Be Clear On Your Email Marketing Goals

Typically, an email campaign has one of the following goals:

• Increase company awareness amongst potential customers;

• Gather leads to increase the size of mailing list;

• Convert leads to sales;

• Increase sales to new or existing clients (through promotions, deals, or contests).

Each email campaign should have a different goal. If your goal is to increase the number of people on your mailing list, don’t try to sell them new services in that same email campaign. Furthermore, the people who receive the campaign to subscribe to your email list may not necessarily be the same people who get the email campaign to convert sales.

Personalise and Segment Your Emails

Does your marketing campaign target people who have never had self storage? Or are you targeting customers from your competitors and trying to attract them with your more competitive offerings? You will get better email marketing results by segmenting your email campaigns. Segmenting is when you separate email recipients according to a particular trait (for example, location, familiarity with self storage, competitor’s client, salary, etc.).

Email campaign platforms, such as Constant Contact or MailChimp, allow you to personalise emails by segmenting. Statistics show that a personalised email (one that addresses the recipient by name) is more effective than a general email (like “dear friend,” or “dear client”). Capture the first name of your email recipient so you can address them by name in the subject line, as well as the email message. When you personalise your campaign, recipients are 25–40% more likely to open an email.

Measure, Measure, Measure

All email campaign tools give you access to statistics that help to determine whether your email campaign is successful or not. Some of the most important statistics are:

• Open rate (OR): The percentage of email recipients that opened your email. Typically, the subject line drives the open rate. The more attractive your subject line, the higher your open rate will be.

• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of email recipients who have opened the email and clicked on a link. It represents the number of email recipients who found the email subject line and the email content compelling enough to take action. Provide an attractive offer to build your email list or to generate sales.

• Conversion rate (CR): The percentage of email recipients who decided to book storage with you (convert into a customer) after reading the email.

To get the best results, try multiple email campaigns and perform A/B testing. A/B testing is a way to measure how one email campaign compares to another. For example, you can have two emails that contain identical content, but the subject line is different. Before sending the message to all of your list members, select a portion of that list, and send the two emails to see which one generates the best results.

Curate your list, be clear on your goals, personalise your emails and always measure results. These are the four necessary elements to build a solid email marketing foundation for your self storage operations.

Related Article: Marketing Your Storage Facility Online

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