As a small business owner, you understand how important it is to get your brand to stick out in your customers’ minds. Running an engaging and compelling email marketing campaign is one of the best ways to go about doing this. In fact, the return on investment that comes from email is significant. Research shows that, for every dollar spent on email marketing, business owners can expect to see an average return of roughly thirty-eight dollars.
As if that isn’t enough, 80% of professionals state email marketing is the driving force behind their customer acquisition and retention. Get ahead of your competition by following these five email marketing tips for small businesses.
1: SUBSCRIBING AND UNSUBSCRIBING SHOULD BE EASY
While this may seem incredibly obvious, there are actually a surprising number of small business owners who send out regular newsletters to their email list, but don’t have a subscription box or option on their website. By making it difficult for website visitors and customers to subscribe to your list, you miss out on numerous opportunities for new sales, new customers, and upsells.
2: REMAIN CONSISTENT
Consistency is a critical part of branding, which is why it’s important for your email newsletters to look and sound the same as your website, social media accounts, and other marketing collateral. It’s best to have a customized email newsletter template that is completely unique to you and your brand. Your subscribers may get confused if they receive an email that looks like it has absolutely nothing to do with the website they subscribed to.
3: OPTIMIZE FOR DIFFERENT DEVICES
According to Litmus, more emails are read on mobile devices than they are on PCs. In fact, statistics show 54% of emails are read on mobile devices. If you don’t optimize your email campaigns to be appealing and digestible across multiple devices, you stand to miss out on new sales, new customers, and new website visitors. You could have the best email campaign in the world, but it won’t do you any good if people can’t read it. Your customers will already be reading your email on their phone, so including your number in the email makes it easy for them to engage with your content and immediately reach out to you.
4: INCLUDE LINKS TO SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILES
Encourage engagement and build consumer-brand trust by including links to your social media platforms within your emails. Think about it: Your users have already signed up to receive regular content from you. This means it’s very likely that they want to follow the latest happenings in your company and want to read any value-driven content you have to share with them. Your email subscribers may not be aware that you had a Facebook page, for example. Make it clear that the content shared on social media is different, and they will likely go follow your various pages. This is an excellent way to extend your audience reach and gain new customers.
5: KEEP UP WITH THE COMPETITION
You don’t want to be just like everyone else. You want to stand apart from the competition. But, it’s a little hard to do that if you have no idea what your competition is up to. Subscribe to the email lists of your competitors and check out what type of content they share. This could be everything from social media updates to the kinds of emails they send, to the promotions and sales they offer. See what they’re doing successfully. See what they’re lacking. Use this information to your advantage – as a way to set yourself apart.
Read the full blog post here: 5 Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses