In cross-border e-commerce, the goal of EDM marketing is mainly to acquire customers (sales) and enhance brand image (profit margin). Here we mainly introduce two types of email content: development letters and brand stories.
1. Development Letters
Foreign trade development letters are foreign trade salesmen sending their company’s products, services, advantages, etc. to potential foreign customers through emails and letters, hoping to establish cooperative relationships and common development. After receiving the emails and letters, if the potential foreign customers are interested, they will further communicate and negotiate with the foreign trade salesmen and finally establish a purchase contract. The basic structure of the development letter is divided into three parts: title, body and signature.
The email title will be presented in the client’s email list, just like the cross-border e-commerce product search result list page. The email title has a great impact on the opening rate and should be optimized. The title can be a summary of the email content or a phrase with CTA (call to action) nature. The title can also be a sentence, which can be a hypothetical sentence, interrogative sentence, and imperative sentence in sentence structure. Copying multiple titles and using the AB email mode to test market feedback is conducive to accumulating experience in writing high-quality titles. Which of the following titles impresses you more?
(1) It is 36 days away from Christmas, do you remember Karen?
(2) DS-346 Hot sale up to 50,000pes from last Oct.
(3) Let me share with you this newest technology.
(4) New Melamine tableware from Yangge.
The body of the message generally includes the following: ① Greetings, ② Instructions on how to obtain the other party’s email information, ③ Company information, ④ Self-introduction of the salesperson, ⑤ Product information (especially product quality, certificate of origin, R&D capabilities, etc.), ⑥ Other services (such as customized services, etc.), ⑦ Conclusion (thank you in advance for your attention). The body of the message needs to convey a lot of information, so try to be concise.
The signature part includes the sender’s name, company name and address, telephone and fax numbers, email address, company website, and please pay attention to the attached “unsubscribe instructions” (operation instructions for those who do not want to receive such emails again). In this signature, the brand logo is exposed, and a very unclear “unsubscribe” link is noted. The overall feeling is clean and beautiful, which reflects respect for customers. When writing a development letter, you need to pay attention to the following points. (1) Before writing a development letter, you must carefully analyze the customer. You must distinguish customer categories, select the appropriate customer group, and understand the customer’s scale and product needs. Then send targeted emails, otherwise the effect will be minimal. (2) When writing a development letter, it is best to calculate the time difference between China and the customer, and send it when the customer is at work or about to go to work. This will greatly increase the probability that the customer will read the development letter and reply.
(3) The development letter should not be too long, and the focus should be on introducing your own products. At the end of the letter, write your company name, logo and website address to make the customer feel that you are a real and honest company.
(4) When writing a development letter, you can directly write the customer’s name in the title to make the development letter more personalized. For example: customer name + product name, customer name + product name + MADE IN CHINA, customer name + we are the manufacturer of “product name”, customer name + hypothetical development letter title, customer name + interrogative development letter title.
(5) When writing a development letter, you should highlight your own advantages, such as product advantages, supplier advantages, etc.
2. Brand story
There are two common ways to write a brand story:
One is the perspective of key events in the development history of the company. Start from the key events in the origin of the company name, development history, product research and development (design), etc., and use strong storytelling and high-quality articles to convey brand value.
The second is the perspective of corporate brand proposition. Determine the promotion theme around the brand proposition, organize situational stories according to the promotion theme, and implant the company’s brand proposition or product information in the story to achieve the goal of brand and product promotion. No matter what kind of brand story, it must be useful and interesting to customers.