Compared to email, social media and traditional advertising are insignificant. 2.9 billion email accounts exist and while social media channels are measured by average weekly and monthly users, email accounts are overwhelmingly checked on a daily basis. But email marketing is not as visible as it’s more glamourous cousins, so is often ignored.
Here are our top tips for quick, simple and effective email marketing for beauty and laser clinics:
The Right Platform
Choose a platform that doesn’t need a lot of setup and where you can add your clinic logo and brand colours.
This will reduce the time it takes you to get your emails looking perfect, and will overcome one of the biggest battles of email marketing – continuing to engage with your audience. If you ever received an email single newsletter from a company which then seemed to vanish? Don’t be a one hit wonder.
Popular platforms include MailChimp ActiveCampaign and Mailshake. Most come with a free trial, and some remain free if you have low numbers – which is ideal for a small business.
Schedule
Ss mentioned, email campaigns often fail because they lack consistency. You don’t need a fancy calendar app to hold yourself to account – just use whatever diary system works for you. When scheduling, be realistic and think about how often your clients will want to hear from you. There’s no point in emailing once a week if you’re going to annoy the recipients, or if it’s unlikely you’ll be able to maintain this type of schedule.
Once a month is more than adequate.
Images
Humans are, for the most part, highly visible creatures. Make sure you include engaging and interesting imagery, either of your clinic, your team or you can use a stock image service. There are plenty of free websites out there, check out Unsplash and Pixabay.
Offer
It’s nice to engage your audience and share beauty tips combined with compelling images, but you are running a business. Be sure to include an offer to encourage your clients to return to the clinic. Ideally, would use an online booking system that would enable immediate responses, but limited time offers also work very well on email. Be sure to stress when the offer expires and the steps they should take to capitilise on it.
All marketing initiatives serve a purpose. Social media is a great way to stay in front of your clients and draw them back into your website. Advertising builds your database of prospects and local engagement increases your reputation. Email marketing has the potential to be the glue that keeps all of your other initiatives together while increasing utilisation in the clinic. Build a relationship with your audience using multiple avenues, with email marketing as part of the formula, and you have a complete strategy for client engagement.
