Email marketing is a powerful tool for beauty professionals! Whether you are self-employed in specialty beauty, a small-business owner, or an esthetician working for a business without a dedicated marketing strategy, this is for you.
Using email can significantly enhance your client engagement and business growth. According to recent research, 59% of people state that marketing emails influence their purchase decisions and 80% of business professionals say that email marketing plays an important role in retaining customers and encouraging repeat business. Here are seven essential rules to help you succeed in email marketing:
1. Collect Email Addresses with Opt-In Consent
To build a successful email marketing strategy, start by collecting email addresses with explicit opt-in consent from your clients. You should already be collecting email addresses for every client file. Add an opt-in checkbox for clients to receive emails from you. This ensures compliance with legal standards and fosters trust.
Use sign-up slips to add new client email addresses to your list at every checkout, on your website, and during client interactions. Offer incentives such as a giveaway draw or exclusive content to encourage sign-ups.
2. Understand the Benefits of Email Marketing
Email marketing offers higher success rates compared to social media and other low-cost marketing methods. While social media platforms are important for potential clients to discover you, emails provide a direct and personal way to communicate with your existing clients, leading to higher conversion rates.
3. Utilize an Email Management Platform
Managing your email marketing can be streamlined with free or low-cost email management platforms such as Mailchimp, Sendinblue, and MailerLite.
These tools help you craft engaging emails, manage subscriber lists, and handle unsubscribes efficiently. Ensuring easy unsubscribe options is important to maintain your email list’s integrity and comply with regulations.
4. Maintain an Optimal Email Frequency
Find the right balance in email frequency. Sending too many emails can overwhelm your subscribers and lead to high unsubscribe rates, while too few can result in lost engagement.
Track what percentage of your recipients open vs. unsubscribe from your emails with weekly sends, bi-weekly sends, and monthly sends to determine the perfect frequency for your specific audience.
Tips for Mobile Optimization
55% of emails are opened on mobile devices and 85% of users aged 25-34 primarily use smartphones to access their email. What this means for you is that you need to be making sure your emails are easy to read on a phone.
- Limit Text on Graphics: Keep text minimal on each email graphic to ensure readability on smaller screens. Use large, legible fonts.
- Mobile Readability: Use the preview feature (or send yourself a test email) in your email builder to view on your phone.
- Image Size: Ensure images are not too large in file size to avoid slow loading times on mobile devices.
5. Craft Engaging Emails
Creating engaging emails is essential for capturing your audience’s attention. Include elements such as:
- Personalization: Use your client’s names and tailor content based on their preferences. Some email management platforms can automate individual name insertion for mass sends.
- Visual Appeal: Emails that incorporate multimedia elements, such as photos and creative graphics, tend to achieve the highest performance. See below how beginners can use Canva to create email graphics.
- Valuable Content: Share beauty tips, tutorials, and exclusive offers.
- Strong Call-to-Action: Encourage your clients to book appointments, visit your website, or share your email.
Using a beginner-friendly graphic design platform such as Canva
- Ease of Use: The intuitive, drag-and-drop interface makes it simple to create professional-quality graphics, even for beginners. This can streamline your email graphics creation to save time.
- Trendy Templates: Canva offers a wide range of modern, stylish templates that can be customized to suit your brand.
- Brand Kit: Canva’s Brand Kit feature allows you to store your brand colours, logos, and fonts, making it easy to maintain brand consistency across all your email graphics.
How to Use Canva to Create Email Graphics
Sign Up and Log In: Canva has a robust free version
Choose a Template: Canva offers a variety of trendy templates specifically designed for email marketing. You can find these by searching for “email header” or “email graphic” in the Canva search bar.
Customize Your Design: Use the drag-and-drop interface to add your brand colours, logos, and other elements. This ensures your email graphics are consistent with your overall branding.
Optimize for Email Builders: Design your graphics to fit seamlessly into email builders like Mailchimp. The recommended size for email headers is typically 600-800 pixels wide (or as preset). This width ensures that your images fit well within the email body without being too large.
Export Your Design: Once you are happy with your design, click the “Download” button and select the file format (usually PNG or JPEG) to export your graphic.
Inserting Graphics into Emails (using an Email Marketing Platform):
- Upload Image: In an email marketing platform such as Mailchimp, navigate to your email campaign and use the “Image” block to upload the graphics you created in Canva.
- Adjust Size: Ensure the image fits well within the email layout. Mailchimp’s editor allows you to adjust the size and alignment of your images easily.
- Preview and Test: Always preview your email to see how it looks on both desktop and mobile devices. Send a test email to check for any issues.
6. Segment Your Audience
Segmenting your email list allows you to send targeted messages to different client groups. This increases relevance and engagement. According to recent statistics, segmented emails drive 30% more opens and 50% more in-email link clicks than unsegmented ones.
Segment by:
- Demographics: E.g. age and location.
- Behavior: Service history, email engagement, and service preferences.
- Interests: Specific beauty treatments, products, or trends.
For example, facial clients might be interested in your skincare products, and your nail clients might be interested in seeing the new polish colour palette you just received (which could incentivize them to book their next mani!).
Younger clients might be more interested in the latest beauty trends and skincare tutorials, while older clients might appreciate anti-aging treatments and information about the active ingredients you use and sell.
7. Email Marketing: Analyze and Optimize
Regularly analyze your email marketing performance to understand what works best. Use metrics such as open rates, how many people clicked the links in your email (click-through rate), and conversion rates (e.g. online bookings or purchases) to measure success.
Try different subject lines, content, and sending times to provide insights into what resonates most with your audience. Use these insights to continuously refine your strategy.