If you suspect your manufacturer’s email strategy could be and should be bigger than a monthly newsletter, you’re correct.
Did you know an expertly designed email marketing strategy can:
- Increase customer loyalty
- Provide detailed audience resonance data
- Build a CRM full of contacts that your business owns
…and much more.
As any relationship-based business knows, consistent, value-adding contact can mean the difference between growth and stagnation; It’s no different for manufacturers. Email marketing is a surefire way to stay in constant contact with current clients, past customers and prospects.
This comprehensive guide will transform your manufacturing company’s lackluster email marketing strategy into a lucrative, can’t-do-without marketing channel.
Why Email Marketing is a Foundational Marketing Strategy for Manufacturers
#1. Direct, Constant Contact
Email marketing allows your manufacturing company’s advertisements and communications to reach contacts directly.
While many other forms of marketing rely on artificial intelligence, algorithms, bidding wars, geofencing and other broad audience definitions, email marketing is an opt-in strategy that guarantees interested contacts will see your company’s message.
#2. Cost-Effective
Email marketing is a cost-effective marketing method.
Direct costs include email marketing platforms and contact data housing platforms (CRM). Additionally, your manufacturing business can hire a copywriter, designer and an email marketing manager to craft and manage effective campaigns.
These investments offer a high ROI ($36 earned per $1 spent) because the emails are going directly to contacts who have expressed interest in your business.
#3. Hyper-Personalized and Segmented
Effective email marketing is hyper-personalized and segmented.
Personalization tokens like names, products and coupons make emails more compelling and human than marketing strategies that cast a wide net.
Forbes reported that personalized emails can realize a 26% increase in open rates and are 80% more likely to generate purchases.
Segmentation is a way to categorize contacts into defined groups based on how they’ve interacted with your business. Segmentation allows your manufacturing business to send specific emails with targeted CTAs to the contacts in your list who will receive the message best and take action.
Elements of an Expertly Crafted Email
#1. Email Composition
Email composition encompasses all of the elements a contact interacts with once they receive the email.
Ensuring each of these elements is working towards the same goal will significantly increase an email’s overall performance.
Those elements are:
- Subject line and preview text
- Personalization tokens
- Body text
- Design
- CTA
- Unsubscribe
- Business contact
Avoid overuse of special characters and emojis in emails’ subject lines, as they may not translate well across every email platform and thus leave your subject line looking suspicious. The email’s preview text should further describe the email’s content.
Keep the subject line to 33 characters and the preview text to 37 characters.
A subject line could earn you a valuable open or a spam report. Almost 70% of spam reports are filed solely because of the subject line while almost 50% of email opens were due to the subject line.
Personalization tokens are autogenerated elements within an email that are hyper-personalized to the individual contact. Examples include the contact’s first name in the greeting, displaying a product currently in an abandoned cart, reminding them of their appointment or offering a coupon specifically curated to their shopping habits.
When initially gathering contact information, remember to ask for details like first and last names that could be used as personalization tokens.
An email’s body text doesn’t have to be lengthy paragraphs. Since email marketing is first and foremost a visual communication tool, keep body text to a few sentences, short product descriptions or a simple CTA button.
An email’s design communicates to the reader where to look and what’s the most important content within the email. Poor email design can lead to a messy and distracting email that earns higher bounce rates than click-through-rates.
An email’s CTA is the specific action the email is designed to encourage readers to take. Following the rules of segmentation, each email should have one clear CTA. An email’s CTA can be anything that adds value to your manufacturing business.
Giving readers the option to unsubscribe within every email is a legal requirement. Honoring contacts’ unsubscriptions will keep your manufacturing business in good legal standing and it will ultimately reflect well on your email marketing numbers.
Your manufacturing business’s mailing address needs to be included at the bottom of every email to comply with advertising legalities. It can’t be a P.O. Box; it needs to be the address of a physical location where your business can receive mail.
#2. Deliverability and Compliance
An email’s deliverability and legal compliance refer to a sender’s methods of acquiring email addresses, the level of opt-in contacts provided and ensuring all privacy and personalization in advertising laws are followed.
Read the full CAN-SPAM Act here.
#3. Campaigns and Flows
An email campaign is a set number of emails all designed to encourage a certain conversion. Campaigns can be automated and or individually crafted and scheduled.
An email flow is an automated series of emails triggered by certain actions a contact takes.
An example of an email flow is an abandoned cart flow.
When a contact is shopping on a website, if they add an item to their cart but don’t checkout, an email is triggered to send typically a few days later to remind them to purchase the item. If they purchase, the contact may exit the flow and enter a new flow, or, if they don’t purchase, they may receive more emails in the following days encouraging them to buy or consider similar products.
#4. Audience Segmentation
Audience segmentation is one of the most important elements of crafting an effective email marketing strategy. Audience segmentation entails assigning individual contacts certain attributes that group them together to be able to receive the same email with high efficacy.
For example, you can segment contacts into current clients, past clients and leads. You can further segment leads into hot, warm or cold leads. The more segmented your contact lists, the more personalized and effective your email campaigns can be.
Do-It-Yourself Email Marketing Platforms
Here are a few popular email marketing platforms to consider for your manufacturing business:
- Brevo (formerly SendinBlue)
- HubSpot
- Constant Contact
- MailChimp
- MailerLite
- ConvertKit
Don’t want to build an email marketing strategy on your own? Venveo can handle it.
Email Marketing Tactics for Manufacturers
#1. Build a Contact List…Ethically
There are several ways to build a contact list, but only a few are ethical and legal.
Ethical list building includes a contact giving explicit consent to be sent emails and an opt-in verification method.
Gathering emails from individuals who have expressed interest and are in-market for what your manufacturing business offers will result in a higher ROI than collecting random emails or buying emails in bulk and hoping they will find value in the emails.
Avoid buying bulk email lists. Buying bulk email lists may seem like an easy way to build your manufacturing company’s email list, however, there are privacy and opt-in laws to consider as well as the email campaign’s performance.
#2. Create Automations
Manufacturers would do well to have the following automations continuously running for their contacts:
- Welcome/value offer
- Review ask
- Newsletter
- Abandoned cart (or similar)
#3. Run Engaging Campaigns
While automations run continuously and are triggered automatically by contacts’ online actions, campaigns are created, scheduled and delivered independently of contacts’ actions.
Here are a few email campaign ideas for your manufacturing company:
- Education. Educating and informing your contacts about industry trends, new technology, manufacturing processes and specific ways your manufacturing company does business differently can add significant value to your contacts and establish your manufacturing company as a credible authority.
- Brand personality and humanization. Although manufacturing is a relationship-based business, it can be difficult for vendors and end consumers to feel connected to a manufacturer’s brand. An email campaign designed to humanize your company’s brand and show its personality can go a long way in developing brand loyalty. When crafting this campaign, include elements like employee spotlights, community or charity involvement and “fun facts” surrounding manufacturing.
- Interviews and thought leadership. If your manufacturing company hosts a podcast or writes thought-leadership articles, create an email campaign to share that content. Sharing content surrounding FAQs in manufacturing, interviews with industry leaders and anything else that your manufacturing company engages with in the industry creates a sense of activism and movement that contacts want to be a part of.
- Product, service and technology showcases. Updating your manufacturing company’s contacts about your business’s products, services and unique technology and processes can keep your manufacturing company top of mind for when contacts are in-market for what it offers.
These are only a few manufacturing-specific email campaign ideas to get you started. Take inventory of what sets your manufacturing business apart and how you would like to see your business grow when drafting an email marketing campaign strategy.
When creating campaigns, keep in mind:
- Seasonality. Particularly if your manufacturing business offers seasonal products or services or if your main clients experience significant shifts in business with the changing seasons.
- Promotions or sales. Whenever your manufacturer offers a discount or promotion, create a campaign for it.
- Audience. The tone of voice in the emails may change based on audience segmentation. If it’s end consumers, the emails may sound more casual than if the email is going to business partners or potential inventors.
- Campaign goal/CTA. The campaign’s goal will affect the number of emails in the campaign, the wording of the CTA and the CTA itself, the design, the timing of the send and the email’s content (including the subject line and preview text).
Want More on Email Marketing?
Venveo can take your manufacturing company’s current marketing strategy and transform it into a growth machine. Review our marketing services for manufacturers or contact us today to get started.
