- Jamie
How to Get Started with Small Business Email Marketing
As a small business, your digital marketing efforts must be as impactful as possible to help your business grow. Email marketing is one of the best ways to connect with ideal customers already engaged with your company and nurture those relationships to help drive conversion and retention. How effective is email marketing? According to DigitalMarketer, "Email marketing gives the highest return on investment than several other marketing means," and adds, "For every dollar spent, email marketing produces more than $40 in ROI." If you haven't invested your time in email marketing, it's likely time to start.
Email Marketing: Where to Start
1. Email Provider
You will need an email service provider to maintain your list and send your emails. These comprehensive services offer audience segmentation, A/B testing, analytics, and more. Five of the most popular email marketing service providers are:
2. Establish Your Goals
Every success story begins with identifying goals and plans to get there. Now is the time to determine what you want to accomplish for your business through email marketing and your email marketing goals. For example, the business goals you want to reach through email marketing might be increasing consideration and re-engaging previous customers. Your email marketing-specific goals might be to grow your subscriber list and improve your click-through rates.
When drafting your goals, be specific and make the goals measurable and defined on a timeline (or make them all-the-way SMART goals).
3. Build Your List
To build your list, consider what incentives you can offer potential subscribers. Making this incentive valuable to your ideal customer is a great way to encourage signing up. For example, you might offer new subscribers a percentage off or a free resource that would be useful for them.
4. Determine What Types of Emails You'll Send
Depending on the stage and type of business, you might have different needs for your email marketing. There are several types of email tactics, including welcome emails, transactional emails, drip campaigns, remarketing emails, and newsletters.
5. Create, Send, and Measure
Now it's on to the fun part - it's time to get creative and draft your email. Keep design and copy best practices in mind, including brand consistency, compelling subject lines, and ensuring your messaging is clear and concise.
Once you've perfected your email, it's time to send it. Until you have your own data, consider researching the best days and times to send your emails. Once you've sent your email, plan how to measure your results, including a measurement timeline and the metrics you'll track.
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