5 ways to use email marketing to build trust and credibility

Let’s face it, in the last few years the internet has been plagued with fake news articles and some marketing channels are finding it hard to convince their audience of their legitimacy. In this era of information overload and constant bombardment, email marketing can be a saving grace to help you establish your credibility (amongst all the other benefits it brings).

With access to infinite information, there’s no Love at first sight when it comes to business relationships either. Most customers want to build up trust and confidence in you before they buy from your business or make use of your services. Buying from people/businesses you like and trust is also a big part of the sales cycle - something that email is able to help you with.

Let’s dive into how you can use email marketing to help you build trust and credibility.

Always add value

Adding value to your subscribers should be one of your most important considerations when you send out a campaign. Value means creating content that resonates with your audience, teaches your audience something, gives your audience exclusive opportunities, makes them feel special or find intrinsic value from having shared their precious email address with you.

Do not disappoint in this area. Adding value has far-reaching benefits, it means your audience is more likely to forward your emails to their contacts and talk about your brand, giving you far greater reach.

Avoid being perceived as spam

An underrated part of email marketing is often an email’s design. Some marketers believe it’s better to send out a campaign than spend time crafting a beautifully branded campaign with great content. To help you build trust and credibility, you’ll want to create a beautiful email template that aligns with your campaign. A template will help you save time and portray your business in the best light possible. If you’re not into design or don’t trust your own design prowess, you can use one of our predesigned templates as a base to help you send out beautiful campaigns.

Make sure you set up a welcome email. Most subscribers expect to receive a welcome email from a brand when they subscribe to an email list. Make sure your welcome emails shines so your subscribers will look forward to receiving content from you in the future. For more tips on how to create a welcome email, have a look at How to write your welcome email to help you create a beautiful welcome email.

Figure out the right content mix

It’s extremely tempting to send your subscribers promotional emails every time you run a campaign, but this can easily become boring to them. As mentioned above, you want to ensure that you always add value to your subscribers in your communication, which means you need to send a mix of content. Think about the goals you can achieve with email marketing and craft your content accordingly.

For example:

• You want to educate your audience about your service or product (BRAND/COMPANY focussed email)
• You want to increase sales for a certain product or get rid of an excess of stock (PROMO focussed email)
• You want to link to different thought pieces in your industry to create awareness and build authority in your niche (KNOWLEDGE focussed email)

By seeing what resonates with your audience in your campaign reports, you can adjust your campaign schedule over time and enhance your email performance.

Stick to your own deadlines

There is nothing worse than being a subscriber on a list that doesn’t deliver on what they say. If you are running a 5 day promotional campaign, make sure that you are sending your email to your subscribers every day as promised. Also make sure that your website is prepped and ready to accommodate any sale or promotion you are running to avoid disappointment.

To start building credibility you also need to set up an email calendar that you can follow. Sending too frequently can annoy your subscribers, whereas sending too infrequently can lead to your subscribers forgetting who you are.

Start sending between 2 - 4 emails per month and see how your subscribers respond. Adjust your schedule accordingly.

Manage and meet expectations

If you are offering your new subscribers a discount or special offer to subscribe to your email list, make sure that you add this information in your welcome email to ensure that you deliver on the expectation you have created. By doing this you can ensure that you get off to a great start. If you promised your subscribers content about specific topics, do not stray from these. It will leave your subscribers confused.

BONUS TIP: (if you’ve made it this far, thank you, we’ve got a bonus tip for you!) Don’t make it hard for users to unsubscribe. A lot of people dread unsubscribes from their list, and although it’s never great to see people leave, unsubscribes can help you have a more engaged list. As much as it hurts to see people leave, no one likes to be held hostage and receive emails they don’t want to receive. As Elsa in Frozen would say, just Let It Go. Use your unsubscribe number to make adjustments to your strategy and keep enhancing your email efforts.

The above 5 tips will help you build trust and create credibility. Helping you reach your business and email marketing goals. If you have any questions please reach out to our team to assist.