As a small business owner, you’re always looking for new ways to grow your sales and reach new customers. Email marketing is a great way to do just that – it’s one of our 6 important digital tacitcs for small business owners. It can help you increase your revenue and build a loyal customer base. Email marketing still remains the most cost effective way to reach and consistently engage with your audience.
Read on to learn more about how email marketing can help your business and the steps you need to take to get started.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the process of using email to send promotional messages, updates, events, and more to customers and followers. It also allows small business owners to create an ongoing relationship with their audience beyond a sales transaction through correspondence, and is a great tool to solicit feedback and reviews.
Email marketing is a powerful tool that can be used to reach a large audience with a relatively small investment. When done effectively, email is a powerful communication tool that can build on your existing relationships and increase your sales efforts.
Benefits of Email Marketing
- It’s a cost-effective way to reach a large audience. Email marketing is one of the most affordable forms of marketing, especially when you consider the reach it can provide. You can send an email to thousands or even millions of people for a fraction of the cost of a traditional marketing campaign (just make sure they’re subscribed)!
- It’s a great way to build relationships with customers. Email marketing allows you to stay in touch with your customers on a regular basis and build relationships with them. You can use email to provide valuable information, offer discounts and promotions, and answer questions.
- It’s a great way to generate leads. Email marketing can help you generate leads for your business by giving people a reason to sign up for your email list. You can then use your email list to send out promotional messages about your products or services.
- It’s a great way to measure your results. Email marketing is one of the most measurable forms of marketing. You can easily track how many people open your emails, how many click on your links, and how many make a purchase. This information can help you improve your email campaigns and get better results.
- It’s a great way to build brand validity and solicit feedback. By sending out regular updates, asking for feedback, providing support, and responding to customers, email marketing allows you to improve your products and services, establish yourself as an expert in your field, and build a stronger brand.
How to Get Started with Email Marketing
If you’re ready to get started with email marketing, there are a few things you need to do.
Choose an email marketing service provider
There are many different email marketing service providers out there, that all vary on features provided and differ by price and customer support. Here’s a breakdown of some of the more popular providers:
| Provider | Starter Plan Price | Structure |
|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | Free | 1,000 sends per month |
| Constant Contact | $9.99 per month | 500 subscribers |
| Sendinblue | Free | 300 emails per day |
| MailerLite | Free | 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails |
| HubSpot | Free | 2,000 email sends per calendar month, with HubSpot branding |
Once you’ve decided on a provider, you need subscribers to send to.
Create an email list
Your email list is the foundation of your email marketing campaign.
You can build your email list by asking people to sign up on your website (PageHoot can help with that), by offering a discount or free gift, by running a contest or giveaway, or through a paid signup campaign.
It’s not best practice to acquire an email list from a third-party provider. The list may be inaccurate, outdated, or spammy. Many people on the list may not be interested in receiving your emails and may even report you as spam. You could get blacklisted as unverified emails can lower the quality of your emails among email providers and get you on a permanent undeliverable list.
Next it’s time to formulate your marketing campaigns.
Create your strategy and email marketing campaigns
You need to create a strategy for your email marketing. This should include the type of emails you plan to send, the frequency of your emails, and the content you plan to include. You should also decide on the metrics you’ll use to measure the success of your email campaigns.
Some common campaigns include:
- A welcome series to welcome new subscribers with a narrative about your business
- A regular newsletter to keep your subscribers interested in your brand and your content
- Promotional campaigns that extoll the features and benefits of your products and services
- Re-engagement campaigns to reach out to customers that haven’t opened your emails or clicked on your links in some time
- Abandoned cart campaigns that reinforce the benefits of products customers considered purchasing
Once you have a strategy in place, you can begin to send emails to your customers and prospects.
Send out your email marketing campaigns and track your results
Once you’ve created your email marketing campaigns, you can start sending them out to your email list. It’s important to send your emails on a regular basis, so that your customers stay engaged with your brand.
When looking at your email campaign efficacy there are few things to take into account.
- Open rate. The open rate is the percentage of people who open your email. This is a good indicator of how well your email subject line is performing.
- Click-through rate. The click-through rate is the percentage of people who click on a link in your email. This is a good indicator of how well your email content is performing.
- Conversion rate. The conversion rate is the percentage of people who take a desired action after clicking on a link in your email. This could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a white paper.
- Unsubscribe rate. The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of people who unsubscribe from your email list. This is a good indicator of how well your email list is performing.
- Spam rate. The spam rate is the percentage of your emails that are marked as spam by the recipient. This is a good indicator of the quality of your email list.
By tracking these metrics, you can get a good understanding of how your email marketing campaigns are performing and make necessary adjustments to improve their results.
Conclusion
Email marketing is an effective and affordable way to reach new customers and build relationships with existing customers. With the right strategy in place, you can reach more people and increase your revenue. To get started, choose a provider, create an email list, create a strategy, and start sending and tracking emails. With a bit of effort, you’ll soon be seeing the benefits of email marketing for your business.
Take action now and start using email marketing to grow your small business. With a little bit of effort and the right strategy, you’ll soon be on your way to success.