One of the main priorities for any small business is to grow and scale sales — therefore they need to consistently build their customer base. Email marketing remains one of the most successful forms of marketing — with studies indicating that email generates $38 for every dollar spent creating it; this is a significant return on investment. While email marketing is not as sexy and on trend as social media campaigns or as in-your-face as TV and other visual formats, it is effective and reliable and should always be part of a digital marketing strategy.
How to you create an effective email marketing strategy? Here are 4 Email Marketing Tips for success:
Email Marketing Tip #1: Determine Your Objectives
Most people now do not give out their email to businesses lightly. Still, once you have a customer’s email address, it is an opportunity to build a relationship with them and provide information to your customer that is relevant and valuable. When you start developing your email marketing campaign, you need to determine what you want to share with your customers and what kind of value you can add to their lives.
Email tools like Mailchimp and others allow you to gather data on the customers on your email list so you can further segment and serve up what they want to see – and then will likely convert. As a business owner, you should know your customers’ demographics such as gender, age, typical work position, i.e., entry-level, stay at home mom, CEO, or middle managers, average income, and the list goes on. When you have this information, you can start to gear your emails specifically to your target audience.
Email Marketing Tip #2: Personal Emails
The last thing you want as a business owner is to have your customers feel like you are spamming them through their email. To squash this fear, develop emails that first start with the customer’s name and ensure that you send email to them from the same account every single time. Having the same account and their name, the email is less likely to end up in their spam folder, but in their inbox where it has a great potential to be read. As I mentioned above, segmentation is critical so you can further provide those on your email with relevant and actionable content.
Email Marketing Tip #3: Keep Emails Simple
Like with many things in life, moderation is key. When you are building your email list, you want initial communications to be relevant and you want to go easy on the graphics. Research shows that if an email or a website takes too long to load, within 3 seconds, most users will navigate away from it – which means they will delete your email before they even see the offer! Also, ensure the copy is short and to the point, ultimately leading to a call to action. Most people will not read large paragraphs in an email. People typically give themselves only a short time to manage their email before returning to work or seeking out other information, news, or entertainment.
Lastly, use a catchy subject line. Having a blank subject line is obviously a huge mistake; you need to write a subject line to compel your target audience to open the email. Avoid buzz phrases like “Make money now,” create a subject line that would arouse your target audience’s curiosity like an exclusive offer or discount.
Email Marketing Tip #4: Use Technology
Thanks to free or low fee email platforms, you can easily create opt-in forms and free downloadable items. When a customer visits your website, you can ask them to sign up for your newsletter and other communication items; this is an opt-in form. Opt-in forms should be easy to fill out and don’t require a lot of information. You should have a double opt-in enabled when you capture a potential lead or email address – this means they will get an email with a link to confirm they signed up for your list – this ensures you have a “clean” list with verified emails. Another method to acquire customer’s emails is to develop downloadable items such as a free e-book, worksheets, or printables that the customer will find valuable.
Services like Mailchimp and others not only help you create forms, but they also help with content creation, sending and tracking emails, automatic emails (for example when someone signs up for your list), and gives you analytics on how your customers responded to your emails.