Launching a new product is one of the most exciting times for any company. Crucially, it’s also an important time to drive new sales. Here’s how to use e-mail marketing campaigns to launch new products.

According to the Harvard Business Review, 80% of new product launches fail.

Speculation is that companies spend so much time researching, designing and manufacturing their product, that they forget the most important factor of all: marketing.

Many lousy products have generated lots of sales. You know why? Marketing.

When it comes to launching new products for your store, email marketing should be at the forefront of your pre-launch, actual launch, and introductory sales you run to celebrate its release.

After all, who better to market to than existing customers who have already subscribed to your brand?

Research shows that remarketing to existing customers is 5 X cheaper than acquiring new customers.

And findings from Frederick Reichheld shown that increasing customer retention rates by 5% can increase profitability by 25-95% for companies.

All this points to one obvious conclusion: leverage your existing database of customers to announce the release of new products/services.

Email marketing should be part of an omnichannel marketing campaign to drive sales.

Below, I’ve outlined a simple – yet effective – 3-stage strategy you can use to build excitement and drive sales using email marketing.

Email 1: Pre-launch

The goal of this email is to build excitement for what is to come.

You can use visual images such as GIFs to create excitement here. Below is a brilliant example of how watch company Vincero did exactly that with their latest pre-launch campaign for their Altitude watch:

Note: you may need to save image to view the GIF

This builds suspense as to what is to come for the audience. The fact that they’ve put ‘Arriving in two days’ at the top also creates excitement.

You can also use educational, story-telling content to tell your subscribers you’ve been working on something exciting and are looking forward to sharing it with them.

If you’re expecting the demand to be really high, you can even invite your subscribers to pre-order the item. This would work particularly well if you had a VIP list of customers who you were keen to serve/reward before others – customers who, in the past, may have spent over a certain amount in your store and would appreciate first dibs.

Email 2: Product launch announcement

Now is the time to announce the news all your subscribers have been waiting for.

In this email, you really want to ‘sell the click’ to recipients. GIF images work fantastically well for this, as well as high-quality photography.

Here are a couple of examples of strong product launch emails using imagery effectively to drive customers to product pages to shop:

Vincero again do a brilliant job with this product launch email.

This GIF image from RISE Traveler drove a huge amount of click-throughs when launching their Universal Travel Adapter.

The goal with the launch email should be to drive people towards the product page where they should, hopefully, purchase the product.

Introductory sales are a great way to also incentivise the first purchase here as well to introduce urgency for customers.

Email 3: Use deadlines to create urgency

Opportunities don’t come around too frequently to scream about your new products, so increasing urgency for any special introductory offers you may have is vital for this email.

A 24-hour warning, with a countdown clock is usually an effective way of driving last-minute purchases before the price goes up.

Again, you will want to use imagery to sell the click and drive visitors to your store where they can purchase the product.

It’s important to be sincere with your offers as well to build trust and condition your audience to take your word at face value. Doing this will also help you create a more premium-feel around your brand.

Conclusion

Email marketing for product releases is a simple and powerful way to increase sales. Remember to use these tactics in particular to maximise revenue:

• Sell the click with imagery
• Use deadlines to create urgency
• Invite VIP customers to pre-order first

If you need help creating a product launch strategy such as this (or more comprehensive), get in touch with me directly: adam[at]magnetmonster.co.uk.