Small Business Marketing: Email

You’re always on the lookout for ways that you can improve your relationships with your customers, make more sales, and grow your business.

That used to require cold calls, handshakes, and advertisements in the local paper. But today, most of the magic happens in the inbox.

More businesses—both big and small—are relying on the power of email marketing to promote their products and services and boost their bottom lines.

Curious how you can do the same? This post covers everything you need to know about email marketing for your small business.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing involves promoting your business through email, but it’s more than one-on-one correspondence. Email marketing means sending an email campaign (which you might also hear referred to as an email blast or email newsletter) to a list of contacts who have signed up to receive those promotional messages from you.

The intention of email marketing is to land new customers and close more sales, but that doesn’t mean that every email newsletter needs to be a blatant sales message or request to purchase.

A successful email marketing strategy strikes a balance between making asks and nurturing relationships. And, it does this by peppering in helpful, valuable content that people can only receive if they’ve signed up to be part of your email list.

Benefits of email marketing for small business

No longer a strategy for big brands and large corporations, more and more small businesses use email marketing. In fact, one recent survey found that email is the most popular form of marketing among the small business owners.

That’s all for good reason: email marketing works. Below are a few of the many benefits.

1. Effective

The biggest reason email marketing is so popular is that it’s effective.

Over 81% of small businesses claim that email marketing is their number one channel for attracting and retaining new customers. 59% of consumers say that marketing emails influencer their purchasing decisions. And 50% claim they purchase from marketing emails at least once a month.

2. Affordable

Ironing out your email marketing strategy will require an investment in time, but not a hefty sum of money. Most email marketing software (more on this later!) is reasonably priced, especially for beginners who have relatively small lists.

Plus, the return on investment is positive. According to the Data and Marketing Association, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $32.

3. Measurable

It’s frustrating to sink time, energy, and money into advertising without a clear of whether or not they’re working. Fortunately, nearly all email marketing tools have analytics built into the dashboard of your account.

You’ll quickly and easily be able to see how many people are opening your messages, how many people are clicking through to your website, and even how many are actually completing your call to action (such as making a purchase or booking a consultation).

4. Scalable

Email marketing is a strategy that can grow along with your business. As your list expands from a handful of subscribers to thousands, this tactic will continue to be just as effective at promoting your business and nurturing your relationships with your customers.

Unlike other approaches that become more labor intensive as they balloon—like sales, prospecting, or word-of-mouth referrals—the effort required to keep up with email remains the same.

5. Intimate

As long as you don’t bombard your subscribers with too many messages—or go overboard with inhuman email templates—the inbox can be a near-sacred place. That’s because it hasn’t just remained the most-valuable digital marketing channel, it’s also the place we turn to for direct, one-to-one business communication.

Best email marketing services and tools

The technical side of email marketing can be a big hangup for many small business owners. The good news is that the majority of email marketing tools out there today are incredibly easy to use and will walk you through how to get started step-by-step.

Email service providers (ESP) are plentiful, which can make it tough to pick the one that’s right for you. Here are a few things to consider as you’re evaluating your choices:

• Budget: Most email marketing platforms come with a monthly cost. How much can you afford to spend?
• Features: For example, do you want access to marketing automation? Do you need to be able to track exactly how users are reacting to your emails (i.e. are they making it all the way through to a purchase?). Consider what features are on your must-have list.
• User-Friendliness: Platforms run the gamut from simple to complex. While you’ll get more capabilities the higher up you go, those platforms can also be more complicated for beginners. Think through how intuitive you need the tool to be.
• Customer Service: The level of service isn’t equal everywhere. Online reviews can tell you a lot about how responsive and helpful service departments are. But, as always, take them with a grain of salt.

Now that you know exactly what you’re looking for in your own email marketing service, let’s dig into the details of a few of our favorite ESPs (in alphabetical order):

1. ActiveCampaign

With a lot of focus placed on marketing automation (meaning, you set up a system where certain marketing messages are triggered by specific actions that customers take), ActiveCampaign offers a lot more than just email marketing—including the ability to send SMS messages to your list.

What it costs: The “lite” plan starts at $9 per month.

2. AWeber

With a drag-and-drop builder for emails, tons of templates, and even a helpful resource library, AWeber is great for beginners who need a little bit of help getting up to speed.

What it costs: Plans start at $19 per month

3. Constant Contact

Constant Contact goes well beyond just email marketing by also offering tools for social media, event management, and more. Despite being so comprehensive, its assortment of templates makes getting started easy and fast.

What it costs: Plans start at $20 per month.

4. ConvertKit

Targeted toward creators in particular, ConvertKit is a great option if you’re growing your own Etsy shop or have your own woodworking business, as just a few of the many examples. It’s easy to create website forms or even dedicated landing pages to start growing your list.

What it costs: Plans start at $29 per month.

5. Drip

For those in ecommerce, Drip is a solid choice for not only email marketing, but an entire customer relationship management (CRM) system. Because of that, it’s easy to personalize and segment your emails and give subscribers the types of promotions they really want.

What it costs: Plans start at $49 per month.

6. GetResponse

GetResponse is another solution that goes far beyond email marketing to include landing pages, sales funnels, webinars, marketing automation, and more. Despite all of those extras, rest assured that creating emails is simple with a drag-and-drop email builder.

What it costs: Plans start at $15 per month.

7. Keap

Keap is another one that bills itself as an all-in-one marketing software solution, with a CRM, marketing automation, and detailed analytics. Keap also has highly-recommended customer service, with 24/7 chat available.

What it costs: Plans start at $49 per month.

8. Klaviyo

If you’re an e-commerce business, Klaviyo is the gold standard. It integrates seamlessly not only with all major e-commerce platforms—like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Amazon Marketplace—but also with the frontend and backend apps that power fast-growing storefronts.

What it cost: Free for the first 250 subscribers, with paid plans starting at $20 per month.

9. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a popular option among small business owners, mostly because it’s intuitive to use. Plus, it’s reasonably-priced, even offering a free option for businesses who are just getting started and only need limited features.

What it costs: Free plans available, with paid plans starting at $9.99 per month.

10. SendFox

SendFox is relative new-comer to email marketing built by the team at Sumo (that’s the same company we’ll highlight in the list-building section next). It offers a stripped down ESP experience that—far from being a detriment—can actually be an asset if your business is just getting started.

What it costs: At the time of publishing, SendFox was the least expensive of all paid options—$49 for the lifetime of an account of 5,000 subscribers.

How to build an email list

Before you can reap the benefits of email marketing for your small business, you need to overcome the hurdle of actually having people to send your messages to.

It’s tempting to get started with a good base of subscribers by manually adding email addresses for people you’ve already worked with—whether they’re customers, vendors, or industry contacts—to your list. After all, you have their email address and they’re obviously interested in what you offer.

Not so fast. There are some rules and regulations to email marketing (you can check out this resource for information on the SPAM laws in 28 different countries), and many email marketing services also have terms and conditions of their own.

If you’d rather play it safe, treat this as your golden rule: People must explicitly opt-in to receive these marketing messages from you. Whether that means they fill out a form at a trade show or sign up through your website, you should get their explicit approval that they want to be on your email list.

Here’s how you can start building your email list from nothing.

1. Choose your email marketing platform

When people sign up to receive your marketing emails, the email address they submit should automatically be added to your list. That isn’t going to happen unless you’re already set up with an email service provider (ESP).

Through this platform, you’ll maintain and segment your list, craft and send your emails, and access analytics about how your marketing efforts are performing.

2. Create a “subscribe” page on your website

It’s wise to have a centralized place that you can send people who are interested in signing up for your marketing messages. That means you’ll want to create a dedicated page on your website where people can fill out a signup form that adds them to your email list.

Having this page gives you a single, easy spot to promote when trying to grow your email list. With that in mind, make the URL for this page something obvious, such as www.companyxyz.com/subscribe or www.companyxyz.com/newsletter.

This page doesn’t need to be overly complex, and a web designer or developer should be able to help you get it setup with relative ease. In fact, many email marketing services offer features that make it simple to create a landing page on your site.

In addition to the signup form, this page should include some information about what people can expect when signing up, including:

• What sort of things they’ll get access to (company or new product announcements, discount codes, etc.)
• How frequently you’ll send emails (for example, once a week or once a month)

That’s information that people will consider when weighing whether or not to hand over their email addresses. You don’t need to get super specific—just aim to give them a general idea of what they’re in for.

3. Include other places to sign up (namely, a pop-up)

That “subscribe” page is an important hub, but it doesn’t need to stand on its own. There are numerous other places and ways you can ask for people’s email addresses, including pop-ups, embedded forms, and even links directly back to your “subscribe” page.

Sumo’s list-building options are perhaps the easiest and least expensive ways to do this through full-page overlays (known as “Welcome Mats”) and smaller pop-ups triggered by visitor actions like button clicks, time-on-page delays, or exit-intent.

For example, create a pop-up on your homepage that encourages people to subscribe. Include embedded forms on your blog posts. Insert a sign up block in the footer of your website or in the top navigation as a universal “bar.”

Pepper these types of calls to action throughout your website, rather than hoping that people somehow stumble into your single “subscribe” page.

4. Actively promote your email newsletter

Outside of your website, you should be actively promoting your email newsletter to get members of your existing audience to subscribe. Here are a few ideas:

• Include a link to your “subscribe” page in your personal email signature
• Announce your newsletter on social media, with a link to your “subscribe” page
• Hang flyers or posters promoting your newsletter (and how to sign up) inside your business

You can’t expect to build a signup page and watch as the eager subscribers roll in.

Keep promoting your newsletter over and over again on different outlets (especially social media!) so that you can capture some of your existing customers and contacts and start with a decent base of subscribers.

5. Incentivize subscribers

We’re all drowning in our inboxes, which means some people tend to be tight-lipped about their email addresses—they don’t want to be bombarded with more junk emails.

You can get around this hesitancy by incentivizing people to sign up for your email list. Basically, what will they immediately get in return?

Will you use marketing automation to send them a “thanks for signing up!” message along with a guide that helps them solve a problem relevant to your business? Will they receive an exclusive discount code? You can even host a contest where you’ll randomly select an email subscriber every week or month to receive a gift card, free service, or some other desirable prize.

Think of ways that you can actually reward people for signing up for your list, and you’re bound to see your number of subscribers on a steady incline.

Published on 14 February 2020 by QuickBooks