At the time of writing this article – like the rest of the world, here in the UK we are on total lockdown and most of us are now working from home. Lots of businesses have either stopped trading or are trading on a very limited basis.

In the current uncertain times, sales are down and we all need to be make sure we are only spending out on what we absolutely have to. From big brands through to small business, we are all looking are our marketing spend and trying to decide what we should cut back.

Marketing is all about maintaining momentum (which takes time to generate) and remaining on people’s radar. This means that although it’s important to be prudent in these uncertain times, we shouldn’t just vanish completely. When we are out the other side of this – we will all have order books to fill and our customers will want to start buying again.

This is why it’s really important that we maintain a presence with our marketing.  Our customers and contacts may not be buying, or at least may not be buying with the frequency that they may have done previously; we should still keep up with our marketing efforts though.

So what should you be doing?

Email is a great way to stay in contact with your contacts during this period. It’s one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing, it can be done from home – and most importantly it doesn’t involve meeting anybody.

Whilst the markets are cautious at the moment, it is well with while sending out email communications just to stay on the radar of your target audience, these could be covering the following areas:

• Current trading policy. You could use your email marketing communications to let your target audience your current opening hours, delivery policy and general terms of business as adapted for the current COVID-19 restrictions. Without letting people know this, your customers may assume that the lack of communications means that you aren’t currently trading.
• News & advice. Use the time to let your customers know about news specific to your industry and any advice relating to your product line or the services that your business offers. It’s a great time to do this, as, by the nature of the subject matter, these email marketing newsletters may have more content than you normally send.
• Links to your blog. A blog is a great way of showing more of the ‘people’ side to your business. A blog is typically a great location for more informal content and a much more relaxed writing style. The key thing to bear in mind here is that your recipients’ are likely to have much more time available than the old pre-corona days. This means that it’s probably ok to try different approaches with your email marketing, it’s ok to ask for a little bit more time to read your mailer.

Find our email marketing services and how we can help today.