Email marketing in Dubai: How to make it work for your business

Is email marketing a viable strategy to generate business for your company? By following the four steps below you will see how this form of marketing can still be a powerhouse in your industry. 

1. Be different, stand out from the crowd

You may think email marketing doesn't work in Dubai, but that is because most companies do not offer value in the emails they send. The vast majority of companies use email marketing for quantity over quality. They hope that if they send enough mails they will get some form of response. This approach is completely inefficient and returns a poor quality of leads and inquiries. 

How nice would it be if you received emails that actually offered value? If the email that you opened contained compelling stories around you industry, useful insights or knowledge that actually helped you both personally or professionally, you would read and engage with the email. As a rule use this type of marketing to deliver 80% useful, interesting information around the industry, 20% to talk about relevant offerings to that person and 0% boring, flag waving content. 

Also make sure to design your mail well and keep the design consistent with your brand identity. Use imagery and spacing to also ensure it is not an overwhelming and purely text based email.

2. understand your audience

This is key! You need to understand your audience with finite precision. If you think along the lines of answering your customer's questions, problems and concerns, you will be heading in the right direction. 

It is important to understand who you are talking to. Think about if you are approaching a company that you would like to work with and you have the email details of the CFO and the HR manager. Yes, both parties work at the same company but their day to day life looks very different. They each have different roles and with that comes different questions, problems, concerns etc. Try to personalise the content to what the person wants to read rather than the company. 

How they receive information is also crucial. Mobile penetration is high in Dubai and you will notice that people are constantly on their smart phones, and he chances are that if you send a mail it will be read on a mobile device. Design the content so that it is easy to consume on any device. And never send a 3,000 word thesis through to a customer when you know that customer will likely read it on a phone - with this approach your email is more likely to be deleted than even considered. 

3. Build a credible database

Don't buy a database, FULL STOP. The databases here are more likely to harm you than help you. A lot of these databases come loaded with SPAM recognised email addresses that will land you in trouble. Remember that SPAM blocks on your domain are much harder to remove here. Think about the cost of your entire email network being down. 

Use tools available to you to build your database. And remember here that it is again about quality not quantity. I would rather have a database of 1,000 people that are interested in my services rather than a 1 million strong database of people I don't know. Social media can be a big player to build a database. Also look at your customer base and build a referral strategy to grow your audience. 

4. Use the right tools

There are many tools available to you in the market. For smaller companies, platforms such as Mailchimp and Constant Contact work well. They are simple to use and have a little flexibilty for design. Mailchimp also has its sister company Surveymonkey. This is a solid surveying tool. 

With these tools the reporting is pretty basic and they use a freemium model so you will have to pay etc for better reports. 

However, if you want to get the most out of your email campaigns for lead generation, HubSpot is an excellent platform to invest in. 

For larger organisations you should really be considering a more robust platform. Some of the better web agencies can build a system for you. This will allow you the freedom to design to your exact brand, the reporting can be design to give you exactly what you want and you will have a greater ability to integrate with other platforms like CRM and ERP systems. 

CONCLUSION:

Email marketing in Dubai is still a great strategy should it be employed in the correct way. Use great content and think about who is going to read it and you should see the results. 

For more marketing strategies for your business please download the FREE e-book below, or contact Nexa today. 

At Nexa, we know that lead generation is the lifeblood of any business, and email marketing forms a big part of lead generation. We have been providing Inbound Marketing and Sales Lead Generation to a wide variety of businesses for well over a decade.

As experts in Lead Generation, we are proud to be the region’s leading and only HubSpot Diamond Agency Partner and have been recognised as thought leaders and innovators within this field.  If you are looking to generate leads, we can help. Contact Nexa today and drive highly qualified sales leads for your business.