Email marketing is used by 82% of marketers to win the hearts of potential customers, given its average return on investment of $38 for every $1 invested.
No matter the nature of your small business, whether it be an online store, a boutique marketing agency, or a wedding photographer, email serves as a potent digital marketing tool. It facilitates the attraction, conversion, and retention of both new and existing customers.
Email Marketing for Small Business Strategy
In order to effectively plan your small business email marketing strategy prior to starting an email campaign, it is necessary to follow several steps.
1. Choose the best email marketing platform
To start, your first step should be exploring the software market, comparing available platforms, and selecting the best email marketing services provider in order to run a scalable and result-oriented email marketing program with a fully-equipped email marketing tool.
In order to make the correct selection, it is essential to understand which features and capabilities are necessary for your needs. Here is a checklist that you can use: Several email marketing platforms are highly favored by small businesses.
When starting to convert strangers into subscribers, segmentation is necessary in order to categorize them and modify email campaigns based on the behavior of potential and past customers.
Small business owners are often expected to have multiple skills, including designing and developing captivating emails to attract and expand their customer base. However, you do not necessarily need to possess expertise in design or front-end development in order to create visually appealing emails that will impress your audience and aid in business growth.
A drag-and-drop editor is included with a professional email marketing solution.
If you are a small business focusing on digital marketing, newsletters should be a priority. Make sure to choose an email marketing tool with a user-friendly newsletter creator that includes subject lines (preferably with the ability to A/B test), adding recipients from lists and segments, creating email content, and scheduling options.
If you are running an ecommerce business, you should search for an email marketing service that can be integrated with your online store through an API or a plugin integration. This will ensure that whenever a customer makes a purchase, a confirmation message will be sent automatically by the system.
Creating popups and forms does not require engineering skills in order to start gathering more subscribers or capturing abandoned carts. This functionality is typically provided by your email service provider.
In the beginning, manually sending email campaigns can be an effective choice for marketing automation. However, as your business expands, it becomes necessary to enhance your outcomes and utilize automated emails aligned with established workflows. These automated emails can range from simplistic to more complex in nature.
Small businesses are tasked with multiple responsibilities, one of which involves the selection of email marketing tools.
2. Set your email marketing goals
When it comes to launching email marketing campaigns, each business will have its own set of objectives. Several factors, including but not limited to, can impact and shape these goals:
- Your budget
- The size of your own business
- Your email marketing experience
- The industry you are in
- The way your marketing channels are prioritized
- …and so on.
Your goals can be either broad, like increasing brand awareness, or more specific and measurable, such as converting website visitors into new subscribers, acquiring customers, or achieving monthly sales targets in your ecommerce store.
Now is the opportune moment for you to take a step back and analyze your approach. Clearly outline your intentions for your email campaigns and determine which goals are the most important. Subsequently, allocate these objectives to particular campaigns.
In addition, it is vital to determine the method of measuring success. Basic metrics like open or click-through rates are important, but a more detailed analysis is necessary to determine if there has been any significant progress.
Here are some metrics that require your attention:
- Conversion rate
- Email signup rate
- Churn rate
- List growth rate
- Subscriber retention rate
- The average revenue per email sent
- Revenue per open email
- Revenue per subscriber
- Email campaign profitability
3. Define your audience
After thinking step by step, your next task is to develop a buyer persona and focus on the specific qualities of the individuals you aim to reach. Similar to any other marketing platform, avoid targeting everyone. Instead, familiarize yourself with your ideal audience to effectively tailor your email marketing campaigns towards those who are highly likely to buy your products and services and provide support to your business.
There are several methods available to tackle this, either individually or with the assistance of a market research company or a freelancer.
- Online interviews — talk to potential or existing customers during video calls. Ask them about their challenges, needs, and preferences. Record those interviews and look for patterns later on.
- Online surveys — create a list of close-ended questions and run a survey. You can do that organically by sharing that on social media and networking or with paid platforms like Survicate. The latter option requires investment, but you will get the results faster.
- Market intelligence tools — if you have an additional budget, you can use market and audience research software, such as SparkToro or Audiense, to get insights into your target audience’s interests and buying habits.
4. Quality over quantity
The quality of your email content is crucial for email deliverability and engagement in 2023. Instead of focusing on the quantity of emails you send, it is important to consider that constant promotional messages are disliked by recipients who do not want to be overwhelmed.
Instead of just focusing on writing emails, make sure that your subscribers find value in the content you provide. To meet your subscribers’ expectations, consider asking them what type of content they would like to receive when they sign up for your email list.
5. Use an embedded sign-up form rather than a link in your menu
When it comes to sign-up forms, using an embedded form is generally preferable to linking to a separate page. Embedding your sign-up form further simplifies the process for new subscribers to join your email list.
If you choose to utilize pop-up sign-up forms, be cautious not to disrupt the user experience as they can prevent website visitors from subscribing if they are not allowed to engage with your content first.
6. Encourage sign-ups anywhere you can
When it comes to sign-up forms, ensure that you provide ample opportunities for your customers to subscribe to your emails.
To effectively utilize email marketing, it is wise to scatter email sign-up forms throughout your website. These forms should be placed on your homepage, contact page, crucial landing pages, and in your footer.
If you own an ecommerce store, make sure to include an option on the checkout page for customers to opt-in to receive emails. This can be done while customers are entering their email addresses to complete their orders. For physical stores, a sign-up clipboard can work effectively too. Simply ask customers at the checkout if they would like to receive updates and promotions from your business.
7. Make your emails mobile-friendly (responsive email design)
Making your emails mobile-responsive is a top priority because about 50% of Americans read emails on their phones. In 2023, it is necessary for your email design to respond to users’ screens, whether they are using a desktop, tablet, or mobile device.
You certainly do not want your emails to be hard for your subscribers to read.
Creating responsive emails has become incredibly easy thanks to tools like Brevo. With drag and drop email design tools, responsive emails are automatically generated. Additionally, beginners can easily create responsive emails by utilizing newsletter templates.
8. Create a list segment for your most engaged customers
If you have customers who consistently interact with your emails, it presents a great chance to establish brand loyalty and boost sales. These subscribers have demonstrated a higher level of interest in your company. Nurturing these connections is a guaranteed method to generate cost-efficient conversions!
One effective method of ‘cultivating’ is by establishing an email list exclusively for these contacts. This enables you to send them exclusive promotions and discounts, thereby motivating them to conduct business transactions with your company.
To enhance your performance, consider integrating your sales CRM to improve your ability to monitor your segments and optimize conversion rates.
9. Send automated emails
If your small business hasn’t started sending automated emails yet, now is the time to do so in 2023. Automating emails not only enhances customer relationships but also helps you save significant time and energy.
If you send a regular newsletter, ensure that you establish an automated welcome email for new subscribers in order to initiate a positive beginning to your relationship and develop trust between your brand and the newly added contacts.
By thinking step by step, you have the ability to establish automated emails determined by a contact’s previous actions. For instance, you have the option to notify your users regarding their preferred products or suggest complementary items based on their most recent purchase. Additionally, you can improve the process by sending automated re-engagement emails to customers who haven’t made a purchase in a significant period of time.
Ensure that your emails are easily understandable for readers who have cognitive or visual impairments.
In 2023, having content that is accessible is a prominent issue for email marketers. Email accessibility refers to ensuring that visually-impaired email subscribers can access the content through screen readers and voice assistants.
To ensure the accessibility of your emails, there are a few steps you can take.
- Make your content concise and legible. Use bullet points and short sentences, and avoid industry jargon.
- Use headers so that screen readers process your content in order.
- Provide helpful descriptions in the ALT tags of any images.
- Choose a font, layout, and colors that make the email as readable as possible.
- Use descriptive anchor text for any links. (For someone using a screen reader, a link labeled ‘Click here’ doesn’t provide enough information about the destination URL.)
11. Stick to your sign-up promise
With the rise of permission-based email marketing, inboxes are now seen as a sacred space where individuals receive curated personal content.
Consequently, it is not unexpected for individuals to be more cautious when agreeing to provide their email address, and they promptly unsubscribe from content that becomes irrelevant.
In order to keep your subscribers engaged, it is essential to consistently fulfill the commitment you made during sign-up regarding the content and timing. If you assure a monthly newsletter featuring chocolate cake recipes, it is imperative to send that specific newsletter containing chocolate cake recipes on a predetermined day every month.
12. Get new subscribers to add you to their list of contacts
One way to enhance the probability of appearing in your subscriber’s inbox is by having a presence in their address book.
To enhance your deliverability rate, it is recommended to include a message in the welcome email urging new subscribers to add your sending email address to their contacts list. This way, the contacts effectively notify the email service provider about their preference to receive your emails, resulting in an improvement in deliverability.
To further enhance your open rates with Gmail subscribers, you can request them to carry out a simple action of moving your email from the ‘Promotions’ tab to the ‘Primary’ tab.
