Email marketing tips for small businesses
As a marketing agency, we have supported small businesses with setting up and delivering their email marketing strategy. Therefore, we wanted to put together a guide of email marketing tips for small businesses to help you on your way! In this week’s blog, we explore everything from understanding your email marketing objectives to some of the most missed opportunities we see from the small businesses we talk to.
Understanding the role of email marketing for your small business
There is a lot of talk about email marketing being dead, which just isn’t the case. Email marketing is still a vital part of a marketing team’s toolkit. The way we always look at it is that email is almost a hygiene channel, it is your consistent channel that sits alongside your wider channels to keep your audience engaged.
That said, where we see email be the most effective is when the team creating the emails are clear of the role of email marketing campaigns. For example, are your emails about sales, lead generation, awareness or informational? Or do you need a mixture of each.
Sales or lead generation emails: Your focus here is about pulling them into a call to action of enquire today or buy today. Therefore, the focus is on the products, benefits and why they should take the next step. These are often short, snappy and attention grabbing.
Awareness emails: If you’re a B2B small business this might be general awareness this off who you are to a cold audience. Sometimes this could be to data you’ve bought. The main thing about these email campaigns is they are a cold audience, so you need to woo them and focus more on softer CTAs, or no risk benefits. This is a really good route to go down if you don’t have your own email list to engage with.
Informational emails: This tends to be when people have signed up to receive information from you and is more about you share knowledge rather than you making a sale. For example, for a marketing agency like us it could be a newsletter where we share industry news, our latest insights and thought leadership.
Our top tip: You don’t have to do it all. We know that small businesses are often time-poor, so why not focus on the email type that is going to be the most relevant to you over the next 12-18 months. Really nail getting that right. Before expanding to more email marketing campaigns.
Identify touchpoints where email marketing would support your objectives
Email marketing can often help with specific parts of your customer journey, so have a step back and think about what parts it could help you with. We have provided an example of how a small ecommerce business might want to use email as a touchpoint at different stages of a customer journey.
Consideration stage: as a small business you are going to run a flash sale for Boxing Day Sales. Your customer has received some money for Christmas and is thinking about what they might spend this on, you want to be one of the options they consider. A well-timed email on Boxing Day would push you to the front of their mind while they are considering brands.
If you’re a B2B business and for you it is more about converting leads into enquiries than your equivalent might be a lead nurturing journey, where you provide information, testimonials or softer information that is designed to convince them that you are the right option for them.
Retention stage: There is a lot of fun to be had at retention stage for example, did a customer segment previously purchase Christmas gifts (look we obviously have Christmas on the mind)? Then do a Christmas email marketing campaign where you feature different Christmas products from Mid-November to Mid-December. To remind them that you are still here and have some great options for them.
One of the biggest missed email marketing opportunities we see is letting your customers lapse or become cold data. Our top tip: is to set up an automated email journey that is consistently running in the background that is aimed at people that haven’t opened or clicked on an email campaign in the past 12 months. We would recommend 2-3 emails to try and get them re-engaged with your business. This has two benefits: it stops you from losing customers that do want to hear from you, but also means you’re keeping your data clean and not wasting money on emailing people that are no longer interested.
Tips for growing your email marketing lists
Growing your email marketing lists takes time and effort, so here are three ways today that you can start to grow your email marketing lists:
Build it into your website checkout process: Give people the option to opt-in to email marketing as part of the checkout process. Please note to be compliant this needs to be opt-in that isn’t auto completed. For example, they must tick the box themselves!
Cross-promote on other channels: Do regular drumbeat social media posts encouraging people to sign up to receive email marketing from you to hear the latest news, views and product information.
Make it easy to subscribe via your website: Have a sign up in your website footer or on key traffic pages.
Get in touch today to see how we could help you with email marketing for your business.
