Email Marketing: Speak to your best customers when they’re most open to hearing from you.

What if I told you that you could speak to your best customers when they were at their most relaxed, perhaps when they’re watching TV or after the kids had gone to bed? Would you be interested? Of course you would!

That’s the value of having a customer database, and you would be mad not to start one if you haven’t yet, or leverage it to its fullest extent if you’re not already doing so.

The value of a customer database lies in the fact that these are ‘known’ customers. They know you and like you, otherwise they wouldn’t be on your database.

They’ve probably visited your business and have possibly made at least one purchase, which means that they are almost certainly in the market for the products that you stock. Not only that, they enjoyed their visit so much or are interested in what you offer to the extent that they happily handed over their contact details to you. They are wanting you to stay in touch!

Don’t throw away that opportunity.

These are the customers that you’ve made a connection with and are most likely to return. They’re a valuable asset to your business and they’re every marketers dream!

A CUSTOMER DATABASE IS INSURANCE

Think of a customer database as insurance. It will become one of your most valuable assets when you need to speak to your customers for whatever reason. The most obvious example was during the pandemic when a database allowed retailers to tell their customers that they’re still trading and how to purchase from them, but this opportunity applies on a day-to-day basis as well. Your customer database opens up all sorts of communication opportunities but in particular, you can boost sales by communicating to your known customers who are, almost certainly, the most likely to respond. After all, that’s all marketing is - communication.

When you have the contact details of your best and most loyal customers, you can:

• Make sure they hear about new products and arrivals.

• Invite them to upcoming events and workshops.

• Show them how to use your products - recipes, mix & matching products, upcoming IT,

• Boost sales in a slow week with a short, sharp ‘call-to-action’ campaign.

• Let the ones most likely to buy know that you have a sale on.

• Tell them that something’s happening - a rebrand, you’re opening a new store, you’re now online, your new holiday trading hours, that you’re still open with roadworks outside.

• Entice lapsed customers back, the ones that you haven’t seen for a while but you know they’re valuable.

• Encourage them to bring a friend or tell them about you.

• Make sure you’re front of mind for seasonal gift giving.

• Show off what’s unique about your business. What makes your business different to the large corporate box stores?

• Put a face to your business and remind them that you’re local, a family business, a contributor to the community, a real person.

The best time to start building your database is on the very first day that you open your door. The next best time to start is NOW!

SIZE MATTERS

Size does matter when it comes to your database, it’s a numbers game. The more customers that you can sign up, the more people you get to talk to whenever you need to get a message out.

I’ve spoken with business owners who send their first few emails (eDM’s) to their database and instantly feel despondent when they get people unsubscribe and what they perceive as a low number of people open the email. But, here’s the reality:

• People will unsubscribe, get used to it.
  In fact, the highest rate of unsubscribers will almost certainly be after the first eDM that you send, and that’s a good thing. It’s sorting the wheat from the chaff. It’s filtering out the people who aren’t interested.

• Some emails will bounce. That’s normal too.
  This can happen if the email was entered incorrectly, the inbox no longer exists, or it’s filtered as spam. You can reduce this, but never eliminate it entirely.

• A 20% open rate is excellent.
  It might sound low, but in retail, that’s an excellent result.

An open rate of 20% probably feels a bit low to most people but that is what I mean by it being a numbers game and that size matters.

As you grow your database, and if you can maintain that 20% open rate, the number of people that you’re speaking to will grow also and remember, these are known customers that you’re talking to at a time where they’re most conducive to hearing what you want to tell them.

But there’s one catch, this only works if your database is clean. And that’s where most businesses fall down.

MAINTAIN A CLEAN DATABASE

Having a large, clean customer database is the Holy Grail of small business.

Don’t just think about it as a database, think about it as a CLEAN database - there’s a difference.

A clean database is one where all the important data is collected AND it’s all accurate and spelt correctly. If it’s not that, then it’s not much help. It’s the difference between a bowl and a bowl with holes in it - one holds things and the other is a colander that’s not much good for holding everything.

What does a clean database actually look like?

• Names are correctly spelt and properly formatted (capitals on first letter, lower case the rest)

• Emails and phone numbers work every time

• No duplicates

• Key fields (like postcode) are filled in

• You can confidently segment and personalise without second-guessing

To have a clean database, you must:

• Set up a collection system that ensures accuracy.
  Keep it simple and clear so staff and customers can’t easily get it wrong. Use stuctured fields on the POS or collection page, set required fields and, for things like phone numbers or postcodes, specify the number of digits.

• Train your team to collect the information correctly.
  Give them simple scripts and habits such as repeat email addresses back to the customer, confirming spelling of names, and never “guess” missing details. The key is the team must understand the reason for the accuracy.

• Build in a double-check step before it’s saved.
  Whether it’s in-store or online, there should always be a moment where the customer or staff member verifies the details before submission. A quick ‘Can I just confirm…’ is key to a clean database.

• On an ecommerce store, set up the back end to ensure the correct information is given accurately.
  Use email validation, address auto-complete, and required fields to reduce errors before they enter your system.

• Be consistent in how information is entered.
  For example, don’t have some phone numbers with spaces and some without, or names in all caps. I will explain this further down but it makes your database messy and harder to use.

• Clean it up regularly.
  Set time aside to fix obvious mistakes, remove duplicates, and clear out emails that bounce. Think of it like business housekeeping. If you set this time aside every now and again, it will ensure the accuracy of the database and that you’re not losing your best customers and therefore sales.

• Avoid duplicate records.
  Ensure your systems merge or flag duplicates so you don’t end up emailing the same person multiple times or splitting their purchase history. This happens often in bricks & mortar stores where a customer forgets if they’ve signed up, so train the team to check first before signing them up again.

• Only collect what you will actually use.
  Every extra field increases friction and errors. Be intentional, if you don’t use it, don’t ask for it. However, you have to do a bit of future-proof thinking to make sure you don’t miss an opportunity down the track.

• Make it easy for customers to update their own details.
  Give them an easy way to fix their email or preferences so your data stays current. And, if you’re a bricks & mortar store, have an annual in-store program to check all customer’s details.

• Protect the integrity of your data over time.
  A clean database isn’t a one-off task, it’s an ongoing discipline. Small errors compound quickly if left unchecked.

Let me give you some examples of where not having a clean database can cause you problems:

Personalisation goes wrong

You like to personalise your emails so that they say something like, “Hi Sarah”. However, when her name was collected, it was misspelled, or didn’t have the capital s, or it was all in capitals. So now her lovely personalised email starts with, “Hi Srah” or “Hi sarah” or “Hi SARAH”. It now doesn’t look personalised or professional.

An eDM platform will draw the name from exactly what is in the database and if it’s been spelt ‘Srah’ then that’s what she is going to see at the top of her email that she receives from you. That’s not a good look. Rubbish in, rubbish out.

Incorrect contact details = lost opportunity

The email address & phone number must be perfect. One digit or character wrong, and you’ve blown it. The whole thing is useless.

This is why your team need to have techniques for checking that they are typing it correctly as they go, or that you use all available tools or incentives on your POS or ecommerce store to make sure these are accurate.

Missing data limits what you can do later

Think really carefully about what to collect and what’s not needed. Here’s a really old example. A company started building their customer database and decided they didn’t want email addresses, only phone numbers, because back then they didn’t want to do email marketing. Their database became huge, one of the biggest for a small business that I’ve seen, but then they had to play catch up and try to collect the email addresses when they wanted to send eDM’s.

Should you collect addresses? Probably not, because it creates friction unless it’s legitimately needed for your business. However, don’t skimp on the postcode because that can be very useful information if you’re ever wanting to know where your customers come from or segment your communications by region.

These might seem like small details, but they have a direct impact on how professional you look and how useful your database actually is. A clean database means your marketing works the way it’s supposed to. A messy one holds you back.

A small, clean database beats a big messy database every time.

Working with small businesses, I’ve seen both.

A small business owner I worked with proudly told me he had over 15,000 customers in his database. However, he couldn’t understand why his eDMs were having little impact.

It only took a quick look to see the issue. His hard bounces were through the roof because the email addresses hadn’t been collected accurately. They were missing the “.au” on the end, spelling Gmail incorrectly, missing the “@”, or just getting the name wrong altogether.

These weren’t customers in his database, this was just gibberish. If you get one letter wrong, it’s not an email address.

So we cleaned up the database, and over half of his ‘customers’ were deleted. He had no way of contacting them unless they happened to come back into the store. Years of opportunity…gone.

A big database might look impressive, but if you can’t reach the people in it, it’s not an asset, it’s an illusion.

Quick check: How clean is your database?

• Do you have duplicate customers in your system?

• Have you ever seen a name come through incorrectly in an email?

• Do you have missing or incomplete key fields?

• Do emails regularly bounce?

• Do you trust your data enough to segment and personalise confidently?

If you answered yes to any of these, your database needs attention.

If you do nothing else, start here:

1. Fix your data collection (this prevents future problems)

2. Clean up duplicates and obvious errors

3. Train your team on how to collect data properly