If your a small business owner, you’ll understnand that lead generation is a vital element of your online business. With this in mind, email marketing is one of the lowest cost forms of online advertising currently available. This article attempts to compile the de facto top 10 Email Marketing Tips for small to medium businesses. The main objective is to help SMEs to better utilise their online marketing budget and realise greater return on investment. This article is not intended as a full guide to Email Marketing but a starting point for those new to the field. Readers are advised to research the topic thoroughly before commencing with an Email Marketing campaign due to spam laws.
Always proof read your emails. Your customers spend a lot of time researching and reviewing the quality of your products or services. One superficial mistake could make or break an otherwise done deal.
Whether you’re renting email list databases or devising your own lists you must make sure that your email addresses are current or you are wasting your time and effort.
Be aware of your Internet Service Providers (ISP) usage terms on sending emails. You do not want to be landed with a DOS because other ISPs may not touch you either. For example, your ISP may brand you a spammer if your email marketing program sends 10000 emails in 10 minutes.
Always have a means for recipients to Unsubscribe to your emails. These should go to a separate email address. Be aware of which emails designs are working and which are not. Test specific designs across different email browsers to ensure cross compatibility.
Be aware that you will need a number of email addresses if you are proceeding with an Email Marketing using your own system. For example, noreply for sending messages. Unsubscribe email, etc. This depends on your setup. Ensure that your web hosting company has supplied sufficient email addresses on your account or upgrade as required.
If you’re at tip 5 and all this is starting to sound a little daunting to you. If you’d prefer to just get on with doing what you do best and run your business and are happy to let an experienced Email Marketer do what they do best then hiring an expert may provide better use of your time and budget.
Test specific designs across different email browsers to ensure cross compatibility. If you’re sending 10000 emails in total then test 1000 for bounce rate.
1% or 2% is the norm from permission based Email Marketing campaigns. Learn from your failures. Was your design unsuitable for the target market. Were your company colours used for maximum effect and brand awareness? Did you use too much text? Inappropriate images? Is your data quality? What percentage of your emails were opened? What percentage even reached a valid email address? All of this can and should be measured to track the marketing campaign’s success.
Don’t send email to just anyone. You’ve gone to the trouble of targeting a particular market so stick with that market. If you are purchasing data is the best to purchase only what you need. You wouldn’t go into a supermarket and buy every type of fruit and vegetables if you onyl eat apples, bananas, kiwis and cabbage would you? So don’t buy all data that is available. This is not only expensive but is also inefficient and more of a hit and miss approx. Your Email Marketing campaign must be realistic and managable depending on your resources.
Adhere to the Email Marketing laws of your country. You should make yourself very familiar with Permission Based Email Marketing (try Googling the term). If your email marketing campaign is international then research and keep up to date with the particular law of the destination country. Specific country laws are outside the scope of this article but feel free to contact us with any queries.