email marketing

Essential Email Marketing Tips For Small Businesses

With email being one of the best ways to gain new customers, as well as nurture repeat customers, you can’t ignore email marketing. Most small businesses aren’t aware of the full capability of email, but we’re here to say it should not be underestimated. However, before you go sending copious emails, it’s essential you build an effective marketing list in order to get a return from your efforts.

Our favorite email marketing tips for small businesses

Make the signup process easy

If a customer has to fill in endless information boxes, they will soon give up and abandon the sign up process. This is something you want to avoid at all costs, therefore make the process as simple as possible.

We advise to make the name and email address boxes mandatory, then have the other information fields optional so that they can fill them in only if desired.

Another important aspect to consider is the quality of the leads you gather. To keep your email list clean, install an email verification API that prevents unwanted addresses from signing up.

Explain what they should expect

In order to be GDPR compliant, you need to tell users what they’ll be getting in exchange for their personal information. As well as being lawful, by doing this you are not misleading visitors and can nurture better relationships that could lead to more purchases.

Email marketing is all about creating long-term relationships.

Personalize when you can

By personalizing your emails, you get much higher open rates. So ensure you’re including personalization tokens whenever possible. Nobody likes a corporate email which has clearly been sent to multiple people.

If you personalize your emails, you’ll make the user feel that your company has thought about her in particular. This can lead to better click-through rates which are essential to start the purchasing journey.

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Give them the option to change/leave

It is vital that you always give users the option to change their subscription preferences or remove themselves from the list entirely. It’s one of the email marketing best practices.

Make this process as clear and simple as possible, so that you do not aggravate or provoke a bad response from users.

Ensure your emails are mobile optimized

Most emails are opened on mobile. So, if they don’t appear correctly on screen, it will cause people to abandon them quickly.

Ensure your newsletter templates are optimized for mobile and double check how they look on a variety of mobile screens. Most email services provide a testing feature where you can see how the email will look on mobile. Make use of this option!

Watch the results, take note, and learn!

Now that you’ve sent the email, the work is not over. You will need to watch, measure and analyse the results to see what went well, what didn’t, and how to improve for the future.

Keep an eye on your bounce rate: if it’s higher than 3% or 4%, it’s time to prune your list by using an email validation service.

Subscribe to your competitors’ newsletters

You need to regularly complete competitor analysis to see how you can better your own business. This includes subscribing to your competitors’ newsletters so that you can see what marketing tactics they’re using. This could provide insight into their strategy, inspire your own decisions and watch for any trends.

You have similar target audiences, therefore keeping an eye on their email marketing should be a habit.

Related: Small business statistics in 2019

The @ symbol for email

This post was provided by 07 Heaven, a Marketing Agency specializing in Inbound Marketing and Growth Driven Design, with offices in Southend-On-Sea, Essex. With a combined experience of over 17 years, 07 Heaven provides expert marketing services to a range of clients with individual specifications.

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