Small business owners often have concerns deciding where to invest when it comes to marketing. As the goal is to attract new clients and keep the existing ones, it might become a headache on which audience to focus more on.
Fortunately, there is a solution for both – email marketing! First of all, it has the biggest return on investment (ROI) of all forms of marketing. Secondly, it is cost-effective – you can send thousands of emails at once, and some of the email marketing tools, even offer a free forever version! Lastly, the ability to communicate with your customers directly is another great power of email marketing.
If it is not convincing enough, let’s look into further benefits and the importance of email marketing for a small business.
Email Marketing and Small Business
As you know now, email marketing does not require a lot of funds to help to keep in touch with your audience. Besides, it allows you to learn about your customers and grow your business since the data collected from email marketing will improve your communication with the target market. Based on the data from your campaigns, you can learn about your clients, find out their preferences and segment them into different groups, so they are approached only with the content they enjoy.
If done right, email marketing also helps to establish a relationship and gain brand loyalty. Your audience will feel that you know them well and can identify their needs and preferences. You can create campaigns and newsletters that include special offers, updates, and information relevant to that specific customer or the group of customers.
Rather than creating newsletters on your own, which sometimes can be daunting, you can also use a service like ReminderMedia as an automated solution for busy entrepreneurs. This company will provide you engaging mail newsletters and branded social media content for your campaign.
The opportunities are endless here. All you have to do is develop knowledge about your clients from the data you collected during your email campaigns, apply it to the following ones, and you are ready to rock!
Further Benefits of Email Marketing
If you are still not so sure whether email marketing is something to consider for your small business, take a look at the following benefits:
Customized Content: As mentioned before, you can segment your audience into different categories based on their demographics when using email marketing. This will allow you to craft a perfect subject line and provide valuable content, which will increase the intentions to purchase from your small business. No one wants to read emails that sound like they were sent to thousands of other people, so make sure to tackle it for each customer individually to receive the best results.
Brand Recognition: Combined with quality merchandising, email marketing allows you to carve out space for your brand in your audience's minds. You can add logos, fonts, or designs that are memorable for your customers. Furthermore, if your email is opened because you provide valuable content, the recipients will start to recognize you besides your company’s branding materials
Sales Increase: Email marketing allows your audience to make purchases straight away. All you have to do is put a link to your website or a simple call to action button. Besides, with emails, you can upsell to your current clients or re-engage with them if they have left abandoned carts and haven’t completed their purchase. Based on statistics, 66% of customers have made the purchase online due to email, so the stage is yours - do not miss the chance!
Learning Opportunities: Email marketing helps you learn about your audience through the availability of analytics. Once you evaluate your email’s performance by looking at the opening and click-through rates, you can learn more about which content is helping you to convert your emails to actual sales.
Website Traffic: Emails are an excellent way to get your audience to visit your website. Once you create campaigns, you can send your clients to your website for further information or purchases. It is a great opportunity to promote your products/services, present new arrivals, or link your consumers to your blog. That’s why every person who starts a blog to make money online, integrates email marketing first instead of monetization.
Launching Email Marketing for Small Business
By now, you should be convinced that email marketing is definitely a way forward in your small business marketing. Let’s look into steps that you need to take to get started:
Email List: First things first, before you send your email, you need to have contacts. You might want to create a signup form and place it for your customers on social media, website, or any other places where you can get your audience signed in. Once you collect the data, email creation can begin.
Types of Emails: You have to decide on campaigns or at least plan on what types of email you are looking to send to your audience to get their attention. Depending on your small business, you might want to send promotional emails including special deals and offers, weekly/monthly newsletters, season greetings (holidays and celebrations), welcome emails, abandoned cart emails, surveys, transactional emails, or loyalty programs for your exclusive customers.
Designing your Emails: Once you decide on your email types, it is time to tackle the design and content. Remember, segmenting your audience is a key to providing valuable and engaging content which will most likely turn to conversions. Also, do not forget the design: make sure your text is nicely spaced and contains small paragraphs. Add some supporting images to back up the text. Include some brand material to get recognized (fonts, logo, colors). Lastly, make sure you have a clear call to action button telling your readers what you want them to do (make a purchase, read an article, visit the website, download a material).
Performance Review: Your work does not stop after you click ‘send’. Analyze and evaluate your performance to make sure that you meet your goals and objectives. Besides, a performance review will enable you to improve your email marketing and take your business to the next level, as you will be able to nail your email marketing campaigns for maximum engagement and sales.
Additional resource: Master email marketing with the newest tips today
Wrap Up: Email Marketing for Small Business
If you have not used email marketing for your small business before, now is the time to begin. You will be able to approach your customers with personalized content only for them. Your brand will also get recognized and increase sales if your email marketing is done right. Moreover, you will drive traffic to your website and constantly learn to improve your campaigns by looking at analytics and data.
To start your email marketing, you have to collect the data and get those email addresses. A signup form on your website or social media will help you to do that. Once you have the details required, you need to decide by what types of emails you will use to approach your audience. Then, choose the design and content for your email, make sure it is engaging and provides value to your recipient. Lastly, do not forget to look at your performance and constantly evaluate your progress – this will help you compete with other small businesses and beat your competition with well-thought and planned email marketing.
Now, it is your time to try. Good luck!