A lot of people underestimate email marketing, but it’s a genuinely effective way to reach and engage your target audience, especially if you’re running a small business. Here’s how spending some time on an email strategy could pay off for your business.
Why do I need email marketing?
Email marketing gives you the flexibility to stay in touch with customers, drive traffic, run surveys, and share updates, among plenty of other uses. Social media is obviously a great channel too, but there are still plenty of people interested in your brand who don’t follow you there. And as a bonus, you can even use your emails to remind people to follow you on social for more updates.
Benefits of email marketing
Email marketing offers small businesses some unique advantages over larger corporations. It lets you build customer trust faster, since people tend to feel more connected to a smaller business that comes across as authentic and transparent.
To keep that transparency intact, be upfront about what kind of content subscribers can expect from your newsletter, and actually deliver on that promise once they sign up. Keep the subscription process itself simple too, a complicated sign-up flow is enough to put people off entirely.
Build credibility
Shaping your content around what your customers actually want is one of the most effective ways to build credibility and improve the odds your emails get opened and read.
Increase brand recognition
Brand recognition matters because it builds your company’s reputation and establishes trust with customers. It also helps set your products or services apart from competitors, making it easier for customers to find and choose you specifically.
Offer personalised content & develop customer relationships
Personalised content is one of the biggest advantages email marketing has to offer. You can group customers by their preferences and send emails built around what actually interests them. Done well, this keeps communication flowing and strengthens the relationship over time.
Boosting Traffic & Sales
Email marketing is also a genuinely effective way to boost traffic and sales. With 59% of respondents saying marketing emails have influenced their purchase decisions, the potential here is significant. Your email audience is already primed to buy from you, they opted in for a reason, so take advantage of that by featuring products, services, or special offers directly in your emails.
Driving traffic works similarly. Regular newsletters keep customers updated on your business, and linking to a blog on your site gives them somewhere to go for more. Include a link back to your website with a clear nudge to click in every email, and you’ll steadily drive more traffic and improve your odds of converting customers.
Offer exclusive perks
Small perks, a sneak peek at a new product, a discount code for their next purchase, go a long way toward rewarding subscribers and keeping them on your list.
How to measure your email marketing success
Measuring how your campaigns are performing helps you spot what’s not working and sharpen your approach going forward. Keep an eye on how many emails get marked as spam, and how many get forwarded on.
Check out the competition
Looking at the kind of content your competitors send in their emails can offer genuinely useful insights you can apply to your own strategy.
Really Good Emails
Really Good Emails is a handy site for this. Search by category or keyword related to your business, and it’ll pull up emails from similar businesses, letting you see the actual text and code they’ve used.
Unlock the power of email marketing for your small business
Put the power of email marketing services to work for your small business. Get in contact with us at hello@omdigigroup.com to see how we can help transform your email marketing strategy.
