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Lessons From the Outbreak of Business Emails During the Coronavirus Pandemic

During the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak, businesses sent out emails to notify customers about company policy changes, corporate responses, and the latest updates from health officials. 

These emails provided important information regarding how businesses either will or will not operate during a time of evolving circumstances. Content writers and email marketers took up the challenge of using the right words to get the right message across the communication channel. 

Apart from the use of social media, radio, and television as methods of staying informed about the latest news, customers and clients depended on the use of their virtual inboxes.

 

internet users and digital activities statistics during the coronavirus

Given previous email marketing research, this may come as no surprise. In fact, according to 2019 data from eMarketer, 90.9% of internet users were also email users. Following that were individuals who use the internet for search purposes at 85.4%. Video viewers reached 82.8%, while audio listeners were at 72.1%. 

In terms of consumer email usage, eMarketer found that 253.5 million internet users sent emails to others at least once a month in 2018. In 2019, this increased to 90.9% at 258.1 million users. For 2020, the predicted user base is 262.5 million.

These trends match up with the research done by Drift, which found that most internet users, at 65%, communicated with organizations through email in 2019. Following in second place were telephone users at 55%. Website visits ranked third place at 42%.

Given this information, businesses should take care to ensure the quality of their emails. There are several ways to do this. 

 

email app

Lesson 1: Personalize your business emails

Personalized emails should be relevant to the individuals receiving them. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, a generic email blast to customers and clients all at once would not have conveyed the relevant information they needed. Ensure that emails have a target audience based on several factors such as their relationship with the business, their location, and age group. This audience segmentation technique allows businesses to tailor messages and the content they want to send out. 

 

mobile emails

Lesson 2: Make your business emails human

Humanize business emails to reassure customers and clients that they are engaging with an actual person as opposed to a bot. During the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses ensured that they cared about their employees, customers, clients, and community as a whole. The knowledge that another human being sent the email can increase the trust between a recipient and a business. This also allows email recipients to relate to the sender or business more, fostering a friendlier and more genuine relationship. 

 

email inbox

Lesson 3: Maintain your business emails’ relevance 

An effective way to maintain the relevancy of business emails is to create an excellent subject line. During the COVID-19 pandemic, subject lines ranged from simple and to-the-point to creative ways that conveyed how companies were in support of their customers. Depending on the situation, subject lines can have a serious, clever, or general tone of voice. Ultimately, an effective email subject line should make recipients want to click into the message and read it for further information. 

Business emails are an effective tool for communicating with clients, customers, and potential leads. These outlined lessons, with the undercurrent of the COVID-19 pandemic, taught companies the value of personalization, humanization, and relevance. However, these are not the only means to creating great emails. There are several elements such as user-friendliness, design, and the use of call-to-action (CTA) statements that businesses should deploy in either informative messages or marketing campaigns.

 

business email lessons

The Find Your Audience team is ready to help businesses with this. Using thorough market research, content writing, and creative design techniques, the team can take your business emails to the next level. To begin the conversion, email Find Your Audience at hi@findyouraudience.online. The team may also be reached at  647-479-0688.

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