Email Marketing for Small Business in 3 Easy Steps

Are you a small business that dreams big?

Want to reach out to a lot of people and tell them about your business? Like to let more people know about your business and visit your store? Wish to promote your business and increase your sales?

Then, what are you waiting for?

Get started with email marketing, the simple yet effective way of marketing for any business. Whatever your goal might be, either growing a brand or selling your stuff, email marketing is a must.

Stop!

Stop thinking that email marketing is only for the top players. Actually, email marketing for small businesses is more profitable and effective than the top business if you play the cards correctly. Small businesses have a lot of tech trend options for their benefit, which can help them in a great way.

Despite being the primitive and traditional form of digital marketing, email marketing campaigns shine brightly until today, and people have stopped using emails. Email marketing for small businesses is something they should never avoid.

Fortunately, with a 4 billion and more user-base, email marketing is always on the top of the list.

The ROI(return on investment) on every dollar spent on email marketing is 36 US dollars. 

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing, a type of digital marketing, is sending promotions about your products and services to your target audience via mails in a personalized way.

Email marketing helps you to-

• Customer acquisition
• Drive traffic to your blog
• Engage with your customers
• Keep your customers updated about your products
• Customer retention
• Boost sales
• Get feedback about your products

Why do you need email marketing for small business?

Why need an old-school strategy? There are many other digital marketing forms you can choose from. Why do you need email marketing for small business? What’s so special about email marketing?

Simple. It’s more personalized and connected to your target audience.

You will be in people’s personal inboxes through email marketing, which makes the email more personalized and help you develop stronger customer relationships.

True. Social media and affiliate marketing will surely help you build a customer base in a fast and easy way. But, email marketing is a sort of direct marketing that is also equally fast, and the cherry on the top is that it builds loyal customers who will visit you again and again.

Direct Marketing Association states that 66 percent of consumers purchase online because of an email. Email marketing for small business is crucial for building direct personal contact with the audience.

Is email marketing profitable for a small business?

Email marketing helps you build your brand. Email marketing for small business is the best you could think of.

Are you thinking, “Yeah, whatever. How efficient it might be, but I am a small business owner. It’s only for the top players.”

Sorry, small guy. You’re mistaken.

I agree that email marketing strategies and metrics are different for both small businesses and big businesses. Any eCommerce business can be benefited from email marketing. But it’s easy for a small business than for a big business to get the trust of local customers who might be your target audience.

Also, the ROI is more for email marketing, such that small businesses need not worry about the loss of investing in email marketing.

You can become an expert in your niche in your locality and promote your content via email marketing so that you are personally identified by your local customers, increasing sales.

Need more benefits to push you with email marketing? Here are a few benefits that small businesses can reap through email marketing are-

Benefits Of Email Marketing campaigns

Small business owners have many limitations. Whether with the demographics or budget, whatever it is, with perfect email campaigns, you can reach your goal.

1. Hit the target audience effectively

You can reach your target audience even in remote places, and the best part is it’s a personal interaction with your customer.

People like to be identified. The game is over if you show that you value them and connect with them emotionally through your emails.

So, an email that shows what they want to see (not what you have) is more effective than social media content, where it is hard to produce customized content for a type of customer.

2. More worth than your buck

One of the most limiting factors of a small business is a limited budget. The business strategy of a small business is sophisticated as everything they plan mostly depends on the budget.

But, email marketing is worth the shot. For every buck, you can expect 36 in return, and that’s a great thing. You can reach unlimited contacts at the same time.

Never forget to show your customers your loyalty and be as much as transparent with them(at least in the emails you send).

3. Easy call to actions

You will more easily trust someone you know than a complete stranger. Through email marketing, if you show people that you know what they like and want, they will trust you more easily than show content they are not interested in. It may drive them away.

So a personalized email has high click-through rate than a generalized ad.

4. Build rock relationships with clients

As effective as any other email marketing sounds, you can’t maintain constant contact without their emails. Emails are professional and personal at the same time, which facilitates direct communication.

A permission-based email marketing means that the subscriber knows what he signed up for. Build strong customer relationships via direct contact with your customers by consistently showing the content they like in their inbox.

You can build up trust with new customers by sending targeted emails beginning with a welcome email and continuing each week with follow-up emails.

Email marketing for small business

With all the above-mentioned email marketing benefits, I am sure you might be planning your email marketing campaign.

What are you waiting for then?

Don’t know where to start? Don’t know how to do email campaigns? Don’t worry. We got you covered. Email marketing is easy and effective with the correct email marketing strategy.

Small business Email marketing strategy

Email marketing for small business is beneficial only with an effective marketing strategy.

1. Create an active email list

To start an email marketing campaign for small businesses, you need a list of active email addresses of your potential customers.

An active email list will help you reach out to a large audience in a personalized way, and also, the cost per lead is less than other marketing methods. You can create an active email list by asking the customers to sign up for you. 

• • Pop up your subscription box wherever you want to call for action. You can ask for a sign-up after a blog, display your products, the show offers on social media platforms, and so on.
  • You can also ask for sign-up by offering gifts and vouchers for a sign-up.
  • You can give people a sign-up form to fill, including an email address. This way, you will also get to know more about your customers. 
  • You can also use social media posts, stories, and tweets to create a contest for your followers, where you can ask sign-ups for participation in the contest.
  • People like the word “free” more than they agree with. So, make sure to give a glimpse of any products freely for email subscribers.
  • Make sure to keep a subscription box or sign-up form link in your bio or any of your social media pages.
  • Ask your customers for feedback or review if they bought anything. You can ask them to subscribe to you to learn more about the product use or help with it.
  • Host webinars related to your content and ask people for a free account to sign up for a free session.
  • Pop up the sign-up box in newsletters and ask them to sign up to get more relevant content.
  • You can embed a form directly in your website and ask your website visitors to sign up for it.

Always remember to tell people what they are signing up for.

Tip: Never, ever buy email lists. ( You may even get penalized for it, as most of your emails will be in the spam folder)

2. What type of emails do you send?

Now that you have active email addresses of your target audience who are interested in your business, it’s time to show them what you got. The type of emails you send people depends on your business. But starting with a monthly newsletter or welcome email is always a safe play for a small business. Email marketing for small business can be one of the important marketing channels, so a good email campaign is a must.

• Newsletter

One of the best mail-in email marketing for small business is a newsletter. Send a newsletter about how-to’s, engaging content, new releases of your products and services, describing the benefits of your products, and so on. Don’t forget to add value to your customer’s inbox, as you are not the only one who is fighting for your customer’s attention. Remember, you are one of the audience choices, and you need to make sure you are their best choice. Your content will help you gain new customers and customer base, maintain retention and increase engagement and loyalty as a small business.

• Acquisition emails

Email marketing for small business will help to get new customers. Small businesses can use acquisition emails to convert leads to your new subscribers. Create attractive and engaging content to show your leads what they are missing out on and attract them with your offers. Leads can be changed into customers real fast through acquisition emails.

• Retention emails

Consider using retention email marketing campaigns for your small business, if you have any experience in retention email marketing. Contact with your target audience who haven’t engaged recently, by sending offer emails, or requesting feedback from them to be in constant contact.

• Promotional emails

Small businesses can use promotional emails to reward engaged subscribers with exclusive offers and show your new products/services to your customers.

They are the tempting emails that tempt the customers to buy more products from your business. Email marketing for small business help to promote their new inventories through promotional emails.

And always make sure you update your customers with transactional emails to keep their trust and not be labeled as a SPAMMER.

3. Creating email design and content

Now you have decided on the marketing strategy and the type of email you want to send; you need to create your own email design and content. The important thing you need to keep in your mind while creating an email design and content is the audience you are targeting and the goal you have for him.

Content for your email campaigns

The first thing you need to do before writing content for your email campaigns is to segment your audience to write relevant content. An efficient and strategic email campaign is important for email marketing for small business.

If you send the same email to all your subscribers, it might make someone laugh, but it may also cause someone to come hunting for you (just kidding).

The same content is never relevant for everyone. So, group your customers based on their similarities like demographics, age, gender, loyalty, email campaign engagement, interests, and so on to make your email campaign effective.

Creating content for a group of people that resonates together is useful and results in successful email marketing.

• Write a subject line that is an attraction grabber and eye-catching. (the subject line is the hook)
• The short and simple subject line
• Write an engaging copy in your email
• Make sure you use the right tone of language for the subject.
• Clear call to action
• Simple language (he shouldn’t refer to a dictionary just to read your newsletter)

Design of your email marketing campaigns

You need to remember as small business owners while designing emails to keep it simple and clear. Also, email marketing for small business depends on the design and the copy of your email.

Email marketing was meant to save your time, so don’t waste your time creating the next Leonardo da Vinci paintings in your email. Just keep them clear to understand, and don’t put shinning sparkles on them.

While designing, make sure your CTA(call to action) is clear. Show them clearly what you expect them to do in the email.

A call-to-action (CTA) may be a download for ebook, registration for a new course, buying your products, using your exclusive offer code, etc.

Tip: Don’t confuse them with multiple CTA’s.

Remember the objective of your email marketing campaign while designing and creating the content.

Email marketing tools

The Internet is not short of any email marketing services, and small businesses need to be extra careful before choosing email marketing services. Email marketing is really a very powerful and cost-effective solution for small businesses to promote their business.

However, email marketing for small business is hot easy without an efficient email marketing agency.

Email marketing is often used to amplify other marketing channels. And so important is that email marketers have difficulty choosing the best email marketing service.

An email marketing software is essential as it is the one that actually delivers your email safe and sound to the customers.

So, basically, the email marketing service mostly decides the rate of your email campaign success. so go for an email marketing platform that gives you-

• Best user interface

You can not sit around and learn coding and all the technical stuff to create an email campaign. You have a business to run.

So, select an email marketing service that is user-friendly and overwhelms you when you sit to design. eg. Drag and drop email editor is user-friendly.

• Automated emails

Your chosen email marketing platform should be capable of dropping the bulk of personalized and targeted emails easily according to your marketing strategy. 

Marketing automation is important for the easy and efficient delivery of emails. Email automation is one of the essential things one needs to check while selecting an email service provider.

• Helpful

A best email marketing service should help you maintain a contact list, segment contacts into groups, and measure your email marketing performance.

The most prominent thing to look for in email marketing services is to drop your email in their inbox, not in their spam folder.

• Mobile optimization

Smartphone users are increasing rapidly, and people shop a lot from their mobiles. People use mobile devices for everything, and that includes checking inboxes.

So, an email marketing agency should create automated emails and create professional emails optimized for mobile screens and desktops.

• Cost-effective

Their budget mostly limits marketing for small businesses. So, digital marketers should use the best email marketing services which provide email marketing for small businesses within their budget.

In total, the best email marketing services for small businesses should have marketing automation, should be capable of designing landing pages and mobile responsive emails,

Some of the popular email marketing services for small businesses are-

1. MailChimp
2. Mailerlite
3. Convertkit
4. Constant Contact
5. Hubspot

Email marketing tips for small business

Some of the important tips for email marketing for small business-

• Make sure the subject of your email campaign triggers spam filters. Avoid all CAPs for the subject. Spam filters will block subjects with heavy characters in them. Phrases like %off, save now, free, and so on will be blocked by spam filters.
• Make your email personalized by adding relevancy and value to them. Some email service providers often add the recipient’s name to give a personal touch to them automatically.
• One of the important email marketing tips is to make sure your content is on time. Stay updated and relevant in your niche, and provide the latest information in your niche.
• Show your expertise to your customers. Show them why they should trust you and wait for your emails by giving creative information related to your niche.
• Give useful insights related to your own business and niche. Your every email need not be about your new products, exclusive offers. Give your audience tips, how-to’s, advice, tricks, and things like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj59VmqN6Hw

Measure the efficiency of your email campaigns

The important key for creating efficient email campaigns for a small business is to measure the performance of your previous campaigns. Email marketing strategy performance can be measured based on different metrics.

Keep a record of the number of emails that dropped in inboxes and spam boxes. Track the emails that were opened, not even opened, responded to CTA, etc.

You can also check whether your emails are optimized to display on mobile phones or not. Email marketing for small business depends a lot on mobile responsiveness as most of the customers use mobile to read emails and to shop.

These values give you insights into your marketing efforts and what you need to add or delete to improve your email marketing strategy.

Downsides of email marketing for small businesses

Despite the tempting email marketing benefits of email marketing for small business, email marketing for small business is not worth it.

• Getting the spammer label

With the advancement in spam filters algorithms, it is very difficult to create content that crosses the filer of those sophisticated filters. Sometimes, the inefficiency of the email marketing service can also cause your email to land in the spam box.

• Designing problems

With the availability of different devices like smartphones, laptops, desktops of different versions, and screen sizes, sometimes there is a chance of your email not being responsible for the gadget used. So make sure you use effective email marketing software.

Despite a few cons of using email marketing for small business, it is very economical to use email marketing. Email marketing for small business is highly recommended. However, email marketing for small business is only beneficial with good marketing campaigns and strategies.

Last Updated on September 19, 2023 by Steffy Michael