Ah, December. This month is often known for its infamous holiday get-togethers and dinner parties. Believe it or not, the structure of a dinner party can actually be used during your next email campaign. In light of the holiday’s, here’s a good reminder about one of the best-tasting email strategies out there created by Val Geisler, Founder and CEO (Chief Email Officer) of Fix My Churn.
The Dinner Party Email Marketing Strategy
Email 1: The Welcome
Once your guests first walk in the door to your dinner party, do you immediately hand them a plate of ham? No, you welcome them into your home, you hang up their coats, and you show them around.
The same should go for your email marketing strategy when it comes to new leads. When a new lead comes into your system, don’t automatically slam them with the “Here’s our latest product, would you like to buy it?” main dish. Give them time to explore your company. Let them know what they’re in for. Explain to them what they’ll be getting with your emails. Let them take their coat off and get comfortable with your company first.
Email 2: The Appetizers
Okay, now that you’ve welcomed your guests, it’s time to give them a taste of what they’re in for. This is where the appetizers come in.
After you’ve emailed your leads a welcome email, provide them with some value to show them what you can offer. But remember, don’t offer them the “Here’s our latest product, would you like to buy it?” main course yet. Instead, offer them small bites of valuable content or information that will get them ready for the main course. A few suggestions would be to
- Provide them with a tip on how to use your service
- Show them your latest blogs
- Inform them about a free webinar you’re having
- Offer them a free digital download
Show them that you care more about them as a guest, rather than just trying to sell them a product or get them on a phone call.
Email 3: The Main Course
Finally, the main course can be served. You’ve gotten your leads acquainted with what they can expect. Now, pass them the main course!
This is where you can finally start talking about the products and services your brand offers. Here, you really can shine about yourself. After all, it is your party.
If your target audience is broad, offer your leads several different product and service options to view. However, if your target audience is small, only offer them 1-2 different products and services to view.
Remember, just as if you were to invite a large group of people to your dinner party, they might not all want the same thing to eat. This is where offering them multiple “main courses” (products/services) will come in handy. However, if you offer too many “main courses” to a small target audience, you’ll end up with some “leftover food” (unwanted products), and leave your leads feeling like you didn’t actually know what they liked.
Tips:
- This is NOT the time to offer discounts, coupons, or special offers for your products. That’s coming up in the “Dessert” section.
- This is a great time to segment your leads into what they’re interested in.
Email 4: The Side Dishes
You can’t have a dinner party without serving side dishes along with your main course.
This is where you add even more value to your audience. Just like the appetizer section, you’ll want to give your audience tips on how they can use your services or products, new blogs that you think they might be interested in, a digital download offer of your latest ebook, etc. This is your chance to show your audience that you care about their time with you.
However, this is not the section to continue to rave about your main course services and products. Just pass your guests some extra-value side dishes to keep them happy.
Email 5: The Dessert
Hint: You’re never too full for dessert!
It’s time to give your audience something that sweetens the deal. In this section of your email campaign, you can bring the attention back to your brand as your leads have already gotten a chance to experience who you are and what you offer.
Some ideas for dessert include:
- Telling them about your referral campaign
- Offering them a discount to purchase your new product
- Providing them with a free trial
Tip: By this time in your email campaign, your audience might be getting pretty “full” of your messages. However, when you’re writing this email, think about “What’s in it for them?” or “What’s going to entice them to take a piece of your dessert?”
Email 6: The Invite Back
Are you just going to let your guests leave without an invite back? No, that would be rude.
This is the “Ask” portion of your email campaign. This is when you ask your leads to take a look at a new product, sign up for your blogs and newsletters, follow you on social media, etc. But the key to inviting your leads back is to always make sure you do it with the intent of being helpful. Think about how inviting them back will add value to their lives. Again, we bring it back to the question of “What’s in it for them?”
Evaluating Your Emails:
Throughout the campaign, it’s important to monitor and report on how the emails are doing, or what the final statistics of the campaign were. What are the open rates? What are the click-through rates? How did your different segments respond to the content you were offering? What day and time gave you the highest response? Information like this plays a key part in the success of understanding your target audience, the content of the emails, and more. Reporting throughout the campaign will allow you to then make educated changes in order to create an even better Dinner Party Strategy the next time.
You can always have more that one dinner party, so if your leads were engaging and interacting with your emails, but didn’t necessarily “eat any of your main course” or “take any dessert,” try putting them in another Dinner Party Email Campaign Strategy.
However, if your leads did not interact with your content, it may be best to hold off before putting them through another Dinner Party and re-evaluate what you were offering to those leads.
And there you have it, the Dinner Party Email Campaign Strategy. Next time you’re having a dinner party, be sure to acknowledge the steps you’re going through and how those steps can transfer over to your email campaigns.
Want to take the stress out of creating your email strategy? No problem! Just send us a message and we’d be happy to help.
