Email marketing is one of the best ways to market your small business online. Creating an email marketing strategy provides your business the opportunity to reach millions of Internet users every year. Not only will you be building brand awareness, it will also reshape the way your customers interact with your business.
Here are some tips that will help you as your craft an email marketing strategy:
Create a Blog
Create a blog on your small business website and commit to posting on a regular basis. Your blog will build a voice for your business and publishing fresh content will boost your website’s authority among search engines. Maintaining an informative, insightful, professional, or even humorous blog will help brand your business as a thought leader. Blogs can also create a dialogue between your business and your customers.
Email Marketing Campaign
When customers submit their email address on their website via a signup option or during purchases, you should be aggregating them in your customer database. Customer email addresses provide an easy way to share new product information and specials.
Make sure to format your email so that it fits with your brand by including your logo and company colors. Separate the email’s content into sections, starting with your most important information at the top. Send emails only when you have new, pertinent or exciting information to share with your customers. You don’t want to lose your customer’s trust by overwhelming them with too much or seemingly unimportant information. Also remember to check your grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure since mistakes will reflect poorly on your business.
Build Your Social Networks
Email marketing is redefining the way businesses interact with customers and social media is a driver in this relationship evolution. Social media allows you to market to your customers where they are, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. Social media also gives you the opportunity to gather customer reviews, network with your community, and provide customers the opportunity to share your product.
To build your social networks you should post to your business’s social media accounts at least three times a week. Make sure to post a variety of content. Some posts should be product pictures and descriptions, others can be customer surveys to engage interactions with your customers. It is also important to “like”, “retweet” and “share” other relatable businesses’ information so you can gain access to their customer audience.
The best indicator of success for your email marketing strategy is ultimately generating more sales, but sometimes it can take a while before you notice an increase in numbers. To measure your success, use free analytics software such as Google Analytics. Check to see where the traffic to your website is coming from. Email marketing success can be determined by your open rate, unsubscribe rate, and click-through rates. While every business is going to have different results, you will want to track these trends.
This may seem obvious, but if you see your unsubscribe rate increasing, there’s probably a good chance that your customers aren’t enjoying the content of your emails. A decrease in open rates tends to suggest that while your customers haven’t “tuned you out” yet, your subject lines aren’t interesting enough for them to open your emails.
It may take time to build momentum, but publishing fresh, relevant content to different platforms will help you maximize your small business’s visibility and help you build followers.