Developing an email marketing strategy as a small business might not seem like an affordable option in terms of ROI. After all, you’re only a small business, right?
But I’d like to encourage you to forget everything you know about email marketing and start again. Email can be one of your best marketing strategies, especially when implemented properly. Ready to make a start? Here are seven tips you need to know.
Use an easy sign up option
There’s no point in creating amazing emails if you have no mailing list to send them to. Before you start creating, start growing your mailing list. Make it as easy as possible for your users to sign up to your mailing list on your website or via social media.
It could be a big call-to-action or a simple signup form with their name and email address is more than enough. You may find inspiration from one of these awesome subscribe buttons and learn how to add web forms to your site with email marketing software such as Vision6.
Organise your email lists
Once your email lists start to grow, you want to start segmenting them so you can market to each list effectively. After all, you’re not going to sell to an 85-year-old woman in the same way that you would market to an 18-year-old male.
You can segment your lists however suits your business, either by age, gender, physical location or whatever you want, it’s completely up to you. This level of organisation will help you target your market and drive results.
Plan your customer’s journey
Of course, the whole purpose of an email is to create leads and generate sales. This means your customer must embark on a sales journey which takes them from the email to pushing the ‘buy’ button.
By mapping out this journey and optimising it every step of the way, you can almost guarantee success. Consider where your customers come from, what they look for on your website and what will make them buy. Define this and then create your messaging around it.
Be mobile-friendly (of course)
The majority of your readers will see your email notification pop up on their smartphones, and that’s your window of opportunity. If they then go to open the email and they have to zoom in and out and have a bad experience, they’ll just unsubscribe and delete your emails. Make sure your emails are mobile responsive!
Make your subject line irresistible
Encouraging people to sign up for your email list is one thing, getting them to open it is another. Did you know that the average office worker receives 121 emails per day? To give your email the best chance of being opened, make sure they are as attractive as possible.
This means taking full advantage of your subject line function so that your reader cannot resist. There’s plenty of content just on subject lines alone and be sure to check out Vision6’s A/B testing feature coming soon.
Write personal emails
When your customer opens your emails, they can be put off by overt sales pitches. They want to read them as though it’s their best friend talking to them and this means you need to make your emails personal.
This means including their name and using language they can relate to. Some features that help with personalisation include wildcards, segmenting and using plain text emails. Some other resources that I love to use when writing emails are:
Easy Word Count – use this free online tool for checking and tracing the word count of your emails to make sure you’re short and sweet and remain on topic.
Bigassignments – this is an online writing agency that can help guide you through the email writing process in a professional and personalised way.
State of Writing – a free online blog that’s full of articles and posts on how to use grammar properly and correctly, so your emails are grammatically perfect.
Essay Roo – this is a professional writing agency that can help you to edit, proofreading and overall perfect your email content for the best quality and results.
Cite It In -if you’re adding references, citations and quotes to your emails, such as testimonials or within your content, use this free online tool to do so professionally.
Australianhelp – if you’re struggling to produce high-quality content, use this professional writing service to create all your email content on your behalf.
Follow anti-spam guidelines
It can be tempting for small businesses to purchase an email list to get started or send emails to addresses that have been obtained via questionable methods. The regulations we have in place, such as The Spam Act, protect recipients against spammers and ensure that they have the opportunity to block senders if they wish.
It also ensures that businesses are developing positive relationships with their recipients, leading to higher open and click through rates and, ultimately, the sale of your product or service.
Analyse and optimise
Of course, as with any business process, you need to evaluate the performance of your emails, so you can improve your next campaign. Monitor your open rates, A/B tests and click through rates and analyse your results. Find out why certain elements yield certain results and continue to test and optimise each time you send.
As you can see, you don’t need limitless resources to run effective email marketing campaigns as a small business. By implementing these quick tips, you will see results almost immediately.
