There are concepts that at first glance seem very difficult to understand. But if we go into detail and analyze the concept it is much easier than it seems to be. Email marketing is one of these concepts. If we had to define it there would not be any complications. Small businesses can take advantage of this service.
Email marketing consists in informing your contacts and customers about certain offers, services or changes of your company. It is basically a link between the customer and you. Easy, right? However, do not give it for granted, because something so clear can become something very unproductive if it is not well done.
Email Marketing and Small Businesses
Why is email marketing effective for small businesses?
The answer is obvious, YES, it is. Start uppers and small businesses, in general, need to be careful with both budget and scheduling each step of the working process. Let's get to the point and learn some tips on how to use email marketing to promote small businesses.
Personalised emails
In the world of globalisation, where everything is so generalised and individual treats are reduced to the minimum, each of us has a necessity of a personal and individual treatment.
If you are interested in increasing the profits of your company and obtaining or keeping loyal customers, the best way is good email marketing. But what does good email marketing really mean? First of all, it is creating personalised emails taking into consideration your customers' likes and dislikes, age, nationality, cultural and religious differences and more.
A good personalized email starts with the treatment. If possible treat your clients by first and last name. When the letter contains our name it seems cosier and is more likely to be opened and read. Analyse the audience you intend to contact. Timing is also something essential to consider. It is less likely that you open an email sent to you after working hours.
Engagement rates
Once you analyse and decide the audience your services are meant for, it is time to think about the email engagement rates. Engagement rate is the percentage of email opening and reading. It is naive to think that all your emails will get the target. If you have a 20 per cent engagement rate you are lucky.
How to obtain good engagement rates? There are different ways to do it.
- Avoid some taboo words that will redirect you to the spam box
- Pay attention to the subject line
- Create a unique content
- Do not use strange usernames for your account
It is free (affordable) and provides a high return on investment
Email accounts are normally free if you do not access the paid versions. A small business needs to use all the tools to reach your customers and inform them about the news or services it offers. A free and worldwide linking tool is an email. If you are creative and send personalised and unique emails to your contacts you will have lots of feedback and a high return on investment.
Email Service Provider
Probably business owners have heard about the ESP. What is it and how is it connected to email marketing? Email Service Provider is software that organises and sends emails. It is a service that can help you make groups of your contacts according to their peculiarities. Do not be surprised if you find the same concept under the names Email Marketing Software or just Email Marketing tool.
Find some benefits of email marketing for small businesses here:
The Audience
The right audience is the start of a good business. Normally, when we offer a service or a product we already have in our mind people who will use it. If we choose the correct audience our business has all chances to change from small to medium.
Sometimes the choice of the audience can change, depending on the feedback you get. Your customers are your Target Audience.
Let’s discuss an example of a target audience. Imagine you are offering an online platform to optimise computer speed. This service will be guided to the people who use computers on an everyday scale.
Affordability
Sending emails is free or cheap. Any entrepreneur can afford it. It is effective, time saving and affordable. What else do we need? Now the issue is to make the correct use of this tool. It is challenging but possible. With the creation of a good email marketing plan you can reach your target audience and among them your possible future customers.
Make Your Company Famous
Once you have a good email marketing plan, well-selected target audience and creative staff to write and design emails, it's time to move forward. Make your business known. Emails give you a unique chance to reach millions of people and let them know about your company. It does not matter that only a very little percentage of this audience will make use of your services.
What do you need?
Your email content should be easy to understand and access. We do not have enough time to guess what people want to tell us by their emails. We open a mail, receive it visually and close or follow the link. If we need to look for a button to enter the offer, or need to reread the email we are more likely to send it to the trash or spam box directly. Thus take advantage of reaching millions of people and by your creativity let them get acquainted with your business.
Final Thoughts
Does Email Marketing Really Work? Email marketing is a widely used tool to contact customers, give information and offer services. It has lots of benefits. If you use the tips offered in this article and still have a low engagement rate, or your audience does not respond you are still having another benefit: something is done wrong. These statistics help you to improve and change your strategies.
Does email marketing work?
It does. There is no other similar tool to reach so many people at once, offer services to all the countries in the world, give you total freedom and flexibility in content formulation and creation, and be affordable.
Still, hesitating?!