There may be an artwork to e mail advertising. For most individuals, receiving impersonal emails is a cue for hitting the unsubscribe button. Turning folks into engaged, loyal prospects requires a special method, and that is the place storytelling can come into play. As former dotcom enterprise exec Seth Godin as soon as mentioned: “Advertising and marketing is not concerning the stuff that you just make, however concerning the tales you inform.”
Storytelling in enterprise, sharing relatable tales concerning the firm, the folks behind it, and what goes on behind the scenes, may help folks to attach with a model. Performed properly, e mail advertising content material turns into memorable, and humanises a model, making it really feel like a trusted good friend that prospects have recognized for a very long time, and whose emails they welcome.
Due to the e-mail advertising platform Mailchimp, turning a easy message right into a memorable and compelling story that engages the reader has by no means been simpler, because the Yorkshire-based Spanish tapas restaurant group La Casita found. From the launch of its special day meals hampers throughout lockdown, to elevating funds for charity via its tapas cookbook, storytelling is a mainstay of its buyer engagement.
La Casita, which launched in 2014 and now has venues in Ilkley, Boston Spa and Skipton, has made intelligent use of Mailchimp options to inform its tales, bringing its model and the folks behind it to life, and serving to create communities within the native areas the place the eating places are primarily based.
La Casita’s content material marketer, Georgie Starkey, says: “These are native eating places and most of our prospects are native. Over time you get to know them. We presently have 5,417 subscribers to our emails, and we use Mailchimp to section them into the three eating places and share tales which might be related to the purchasers of every one. We will additionally personalise the emails, which makes an enormous distinction to sustaining these relationships and protecting folks engaged and fascinated by what we’re doing on an ongoing foundation.”
Subscribers obtain a month-to-month What’s On e mail with details about what’s occurring at their native restaurant, together with group information and forthcoming occasions, after which a second e mail mid-month specializing in the restaurant’s fundamental provide. “Mailchimp permits us to create participating content material with photographs and movies that flip our message right into a story about our model that folks wish to learn.”
Sharing behind-the-scenes content material allows companies to attach with prospects on a extra private degree, and may help make the model extra approachable and relatable. This method helped La Casita’s e mail storytelling come into its personal throughout lockdown, when face-to-face engagement between employees and prospects got here to an abrupt finish.
To keep up that engagement, head chef and co-founder Simon Miller, a quarter-finalist within the BBC’s 2012 Masterchef collection, took to YouTube to current a collection of cooking demos that includes La Casita’s hottest dishes. By way of Mailchimp, subscribers have been emailed with a hyperlink to the YouTube movies and the story behind them; Miller was sharing his culinary experience so that folks may recreate their favorite La Casita dishes at residence, and proceed to benefit from the La Casita expertise even once they couldn’t come to the restaurant.
Nevertheless, as Starkey explains, they realised that not everybody had entry to all of the substances or a number of the kitchen tools that Miller was utilizing within the demos. This sparked the thought of making meals kits or hampers, beginning with a Valentine’s Day hamper and adopted by a Mom’s Day hamper, the place all of the substances for the dishes got here ready and able to be assembled simply.
“Within the absence of bodily interplay within the eating places, the usage of storytelling in our e mail campaigns stored folks , inspired to attempt one thing new, and engaged with our model,” she says. “This additionally enabled us to pivot our enterprise and herald some income till we may reopen the eating places.”
story may encourage prospects to type emotional connections with an organization’s charitable efforts. Throughout lockdown, there was an actual sense among the many La Casita group of wanting to assist folks. On the again of the YouTube cookery demos and the baskets, the subsequent chapter in its story was the launch of a cookbook in 2020 to boost funds for charity.
“It was a small tapas cookbook that includes our high dishes and we raised £3,000 for the charitable meals redistributor FareShare,” says Starkey. “We have been in a position to talk the story behind FareShare and why we have been supporting it. Our storytelling tells our prospects what we stand for as a model, and that we’re a enterprise dedicated to doing one thing good.”
Now, with the price of dwelling disaster affecting folks’s lives, La Casita’s tales are as soon as once more targeted on its efforts to do one thing constructive to assist, this time launching a contest to win dinner for 2; a deal with to sit up for in troublesome occasions.
Starkey says: “E-mail is our major communication channel, and due to Mailchimp we’ve got been in a position to maximise the advantages by creating constant, compelling tales that folks wish to learn, versus merely firing off emails sporadically each time we’ve got a particular provide. We’ve a really low unsubscribe price and I consider that our storytelling method is testomony to that.”
Mailchimp is the primary e mail advertising and automations model*. With plans appropriate for each measurement of enterprise and database, entrepreneurs are in a position to ship the appropriate message on the proper time to transform extra prospects, get AI-assisted ideas to make content material extra participating, and arrange automated workflows to cross-sell merchandise, recuperate deserted carts and to assist drive extra loyalty and gross sales.
*Primarily based on competitor manufacturers’ publicly accessible knowledge on worldwide numbers of shoppers in 2021/2022.
The views, data and opinions expressed on this article are these of the folks interviewed and don’t essentially signify or replicate the views of Intuit, Mailchimp or any of its cornerstone manufacturers or workers. The first objective of this text is to teach and inform.
