Nearly 4 billion people worldwide use email, and this number is nowhere near slowing down. No social media platform or marketing media can offer this type of reach to potential new clients. Email is far easier to share and more personal among your audience. Giving you a more powerful tool to connect and communicate your messages to existing and future clients.
Here are 6 proven small business email marketing tips you can use to leverage this powerful communication channel to your advantage.
Click Here: Free Email Marketing Guide
6 Small Business Email Marketing Tips
If you’re not using email to boost or promote your business, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity. Email is powerful marketing that you should take advantage of to promote your online content, products and services. It keeps your current relationships strong while further increasing your audience and potential revenue streams.
1. Develop a Lead Magnet
The first step to email marketing is getting the email address of your target audience. This is done by creating a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a valuable piece of content you create to give away to your audience in exchange for their email address or other contact information in order to market to them later.
Create a lead magnet that you know your audience won’t or can’t say no to. How-to guides, short eBooks, templates, printables, or fun quizzes are a few ideas to use.
2. Start and End with a Call-To-Action
The purpose of email marketing is to get your audience to do something or take some kind of action. This means the bulk of the content should be about your call-to-action. If you want them to join your Facebook group, for example, then start the conversation by letting them know you would like them to join. Then use the rest of the email to benchmark why they should join the group and what benefits they will get from joining. Finally, before you click send, add a link to the Facebook group to make it as easy as possible for them to follow your request.
3. Be Conversational Yet Valuable
Use emails to educate but act as if your audience are right before you, participating in an active conversation. Emails are personal. Even though you may be sending the same email to multiple people, the reader doesn’t see it that way. They only see you and that you are referencing them. The more personal it is, the more valued the viewer will feel and want to continue being a part of your business.
4. Create Event Updates and Invites
Always send separate email notifications when you want to tell your email subscribers about upcoming events, sales, promotions, etc and personally invite them to click on a link to a page on your website about the event. This not only makes them feel special but also acts as a reminder. Don’t expect them to remember your schedule or new events that you tell them about in your monthly or weekly newsletter.
5. Don’t Just Send Promotional Emails
There is a rule of thumb most people follow but it’s not really a total science, it’s just what people say. Test out the truth for your audience, but most people say to promote 20% of the time and send valuable content 80% of the time. Depending on your audience, more or less might work best.
6. Make It Easy For People To Unsubscribe
Your email needs to be friendly and provide relevant information to your reader. However, if your reader decides that they no longer want to receive emails from you, allow them to easily unsubscribe. No business want to lose a potential customer, but if you make it difficult for people to unsubscribe from your email, they will start to resent your emails and certainly will never buy from you. They may also report you as spam, which will cause you problems in the future.
Free Guide: How To Use Email To Quickly Grow Your Business
Sending emails to customers is still one of the most effective marketing strategies for successful modern businesses. But it has become a great deal more competitive in recent years, with savvy readers becoming more discerning about what they put down their email address for. No one likes spam, after all. And when you’re fighting for attention in a busy inbox, you have to make sure that your message not only stands out, but gets read and some action is taken. To learn more about the fundamentals of effective small business email marketing, download this Free Email Marketing Guide.