The weather can be distracting. But, if you can carve out a few minutes to send a message that links your business to something that’s top of mind with your target audience – like the upcoming storm – you’ll see an immediate impact on sales.

1. Know Your Audience
In the DC metro area, an inch of snow can shut down the city. Everyone is concerned about the weather. It affects whether or not we can get to client meetings and if our staff can get to the office. It impacts the safety of our families. Use this! It works: marketing emails tied to extreme weather outperform all other emails we send.

2. Be Creative
The message needs to match, so you need to find a creative way to tie it in. An email I received today, from a favorite restaurant, tells customers to skip the stores (the DC-area grocery stores will indeed be cleaned out of milk, bread and toilet paper by the end of the day today) and get takeout instead. Clever.

3. Add Emotion
Weather alerts may be stressing your customers out. You can add to this – or not! While the restaurant above sent a cheery communication, local auto repair and snow removal businesses are posting urgent messages to “save this number – you may need it.”

We prefer humor, ourselves. It can be tough to get on the calendar of one of our close-by clients; I’ll send her an email today to tell her that I’ll put on my snow boots and walk over if she has time to meet tomorrow. It will get her attention – and a laugh.

Jump on it, already! There is still plenty of time to connect with your clients. If you need help brainstorming a relevant message, just email or call.