While it may sound simple – just send emails! – there are many ways to maximize your email marketing efforts, from building your list to analyzing results, and more. So we’ve put together a comprehensive set of instructions to make your small business email marketing as successful as possible.
What is email marketing?
But first, what is email marketing really ? It involves sending targeted emails to customers who have actively opted to hear more of what you have to say. These emails can include promotions, news, product launches, and incentives, among other content. The goal: to provide relevant information that your subscribers will find valuable, and to develop relationships with customers to build trust and loyalty.
What makes email marketing for small businesses particularly unique and important is germany whatsapp number data that it is direct and personalized, allowing you to cut through the noise and focus on the message you want to convey. Whether the purpose is to promote, inform, retain (customers), or transact, emails give you the flexibility and precision to achieve meaningful business goals.
Even better, email marketing can be leveraged by any type of business, regardless of its goal or size. Making it successful has little to do with actual monetary investment (great news for those on a budget!), but rather with strategy. That’s why we’re getting down to the basics on how to make it especially fruitful for your small business.
How can email marketing help your small business?
Email marketing is one of the most valuable tools in your marketing toolbox. In fact, half of marketers say that email marketing is their most impactful channel . That’s because, unlike other forms of marketing, it allows you to communicate with your most engaged customers, as well as potential new customers. This allows you to develop a relationship with them, increasing credibility and loyalty, and ultimately leading to more sales.
What also makes it particularly valuable for small businesses is that it builds on an existing point of differentiation in your business's history: that you are not a huge corporation, and as such, your direct connection with the customer is even more genuine and meaningful.
Need something else? Here is a list of key ways email marketing can be especially helpful for you and your small business:
Low cost
With minimal investment of time, you can begin creating what will become one of your most valuable marketing assets. All you need to start building your list is an easy-to-use online form.
Higher ROI
Particularly for small businesses, email marketing has an incredibly high ROI: over $36 earned for every dollar spent ! So, given the small budget of a small business, the ability to invest a little and earn a lot should not be underestimated.
Reach your audience directly
Few forms of marketing allow you to speak directly to your target audience, and without distractions. This allows you to send highly relevant messages, and accurately measure and improve their success.
Create loyal customers
Building a mailing list gives you direct access to your most interested audience, allowing your small business to build credibility and connection with your customers. As such, existing customers are more likely to come back for more, and potential customers are more likely to become actual customers.
Tracking and measuring results (and direct sales)
The beauty of email marketing is that you can track and measure your results, allowing you to improve and fine-tune your efforts. By tracking data like open rate, bounce rate, unsubscribes, conversions, and more, you can tweak your list and messaging to increase engagement and sales.
How to start using email marketing for your small business?
To get started with email marketing , there are a few steps you need to follow. Follow these guidelines to run a successful email marketing campaign:
1. Choose an easy-to-use email marketing platform
If you're managing your email campaigns manually, you probably don't have time for anything else. As a small business owner, you can't afford to waste all your energy on one aspect of your business when you have an entire business to run.
That’s why having an email marketing platform is crucial. What’s even more important is choosing the right email marketing tool to meet your business needs. Here are the key features you should keep in mind when selecting your email marketing service:
First, look for a tool that has an easy-to-use editor. Whether you're tech-savvy or not, an easy-to-use editor will save you a lot of time and effort. Features could include drag-and-drop capability, or any other intuitive editor that lets you create your emails in just a few clicks.
Professional looking emails
Look for email marketing tools that help you create professional-looking emails. These features can include ready-made designs or, better yet, templates that you can customize depending on your business needs and goals.
Customization options
Email customization options allow you to include your branding, such as your logo, brand colors, brand fonts, and other elements. It's important for your customers to recognize that the email is coming from your brand, not only based on the content but also on its visual appearance.
Responsive Email Design
Your emails should be responsive, meaning they should look equally good on both desktop and mobile. This is because users live in a dynamic world and open emails on multiple devices, depending on their current location.
Customization options
With so many emails being sent every day, it's important to personalize yours and stand out from the crowd. Personalization options can include, for example, the ability to automatically address your recipients by their first and/or last name in the emails you send them.
Healthy subscriber list
To maintain a healthy subscriber list, the optimal email marketing platform will allow you to easily manage unsubscribed contacts, hard bounces, and other similar contacts. This will help you, for example, reduce your bounce rate and keep a good record as an email sender/seller (and thus prevent your emails from becoming spam). Your email marketing platform should have these features, and they should be as automated and easy to manage as possible.
Analysis tools
A detailed analytics tool is a vital feature of your overall email marketing platform, as you need to be able to track the performance of your email campaigns. By analyzing the results, you can identify potential weaknesses and strengths, and then improve future email campaigns accordingly.
Deliverability
Not all email marketing platforms are created equal when it comes to getting your emails into recipients’ inboxes. To ensure high email marketing deliverability , choose a platform that has a good track record and reputation.
Excellent customer service
You may have questions or concerns when using even the best email marketing platforms. Therefore, having the ability to ask questions and get quick answers and help from a great customer support team is absolutely critical and game-changing. The ideal way to ensure the quality of a platform's customer support is through personal experience (if you can), or by reading reviews and ratings.
Scalability
Successfully executed email marketing translates into business growth. As a result, if you’re on the right track, you’ll see your list grow, and you may even need to import more new customers and/or potential customers into the platform. This requires an email marketing platform that can scale along with your business needs, all for a reasonable price and with no additional effort on your part.
Targeting options
Last but not least, you need to be able to segment your audience so that you can send content that is relevant to each group’s interests and needs. This further increases your chance of driving sales. Segmenting your audience (by tags, filters, etc.) in an email marketing platform should be easy to do.
Email Marketing Made Easy
Get all your needs covered in one place with SiteGround Email Marketing . Its user-friendly dashboard makes it easy to create and send email campaigns, plus it comes with a host of other features that help take the guesswork out of email marketing for small businesses. Some of the benefits include:
Create campaigns easily with our user-friendly interface, free professional templates and designs, and intuitive customization tools
Create your mailing list with a signup form generated by our WP lead generation plugin
