Why You Should Use Small Business Email Marketing

Email marketing is more important than ever as a tool to help improve the customer base and bottom line for small businesses. This is especially true given that the competition is greater than ever in this prolonged recession. There isn’t much else that can impact a business’ bottom line faster than a well thought out email marketing campaign to a large and well nurtured email list.

A business can easily and cheaply deliver a large number of personalized and personalized messages at predetermined intervals for next to nothing, so why not take advantage of it? All companies, big and small, should be doing this. Most small businesses have not developed a serious email marketing strategy and this is something that needs to be done sooner rather than later. They are leaving money on the table, so to speak, by not using this valuable marketing method.

Before you can do any kind of meaningful email marketing campaign, you need to have a list of people’s email addresses and names, if possible. There are several ways to make this move fast. as they say “the money is in the list.”

How valuable is a customer to you?

Customer lifetime value

Most small business owners won’t know this, but here’s how it’s calculated:

Determine the average net spend for a new customer transaction: ______________

Determine the average number of repeat purchases per year: ______________________

Calculate the average number of years a customer frequents the business: ________________

So let’s say the average customer buys an item worth £100 of profit to the business and then repeats this process one more time in the year, it’s worth £200 to the business in the first year. If they remain a customer for 5 years, they are worth £1,000.

Use whatever numbers you want, but this is an easy way to see the value of a customer

Email List Building:

1. website pages. You never know what page a visitor will land on when they land on your site from a search engine or link. You maximize your chances of getting a lead if you have a signup form on every page of your site.
2. Special offers only online: Try to get your customers on your email lists to receive these special offers. Offers can be discounted products, two-for-one sales, coupons, vouchers, or whatever you want.
3. Ask for email addresses. Have your staff ask customers for their email address.
4. Send postcards to your mailing list. If you have mailing address information but no existing customer email addresses, send them a postcard asking them to subscribe to your email list. You’ll want to provide them with some kind of incentive, of course.
5. Use Invoices: add a registration box on your invoices.
6. rented lists: It can be useful to create a list of subscribers. Be careful to only use a reputable provider from such a list and make sure your list contains names and addresses of people who are specifically interested in your type of products or services. Otherwise, a waste of time.
7. Create a newsletter:and promote it in all correspondence and advertising of your company.

Rules

1. Confirm all new subscribers: This will be done automatically through your autoresponder.
2. Use the “double opt-in” method to ensure the integrity of the record. This confirms that the subscriber has given you their email address by prompting the subscriber to reply via email again to confirm.
3. Use the link to unsubscribe Fnature:This is very important so that the subscriber knows that they can unsubscribe from your list if they unsubscribe. This stops many complaints about spam. All reputable systems will provide this feature.
4. Personalize each message: You can greatly increase your read and click rates by putting subscribers’ names in the email. It is important to establish a relationship with each customer.
5. Choose your wording carefully. Most email systems use spam filters that scan for certain words or combinations.
6. Use attention-grabbing subject headings: When your email arrives in your subscriber’s inbox, there are only seconds left for subscribers’ attention. They will promptly delete your email or ignore it.
7. don’t add email addresses to your list: unless the person has given you permission.
8. Don’t forget to sign your messages: Always include a signature at the bottom of your emails as it is one of the easiest ways to drive more traffic to your website. This signature must include your personal data, your company data and a link to unsubscribe.

Email Marketing Systems

Ok, now you have the basics of email marketing. Let’s focus on what you need to do next. You will need to select the autoresponder system that best suits your requirements. Below are some of the most commonly used systems. These are not expensive and include the hosting of the software (basically you just rent it) and your subscriber lists and follow up messages etc. All of these are hosted.

AWeber: It has some great features and is easy to use. It costs about $19.00 per month, but the cost will increase once you get over 5000 subscribers. Highly reliable and robust.

Get an answer: Similar to Aweber, but a bit more difficult to use in my opinion. It costs around $18.00 per month, cheaper with annual payments.

Trafficwave.Net: You get unlimited autoresponders and click report tracking. The price stays the same regardless of how many subscribers you get. It costs about $17.95 per month.

imnic: A new and promising hosted system. It has the vast majority of the features of the others, the same delivery levels and LESS strict policies. Imnica Mail also has a full API for easy integration with existing systems. It’s not as easy to use as some of the others, but it’s a great price of $9.00 per month.

With Imnica Mail you also get unlimited lists, unlimited autoresponders and unlimited broadcasts to your list.

Mild Infusion. Good option for larger companies that need to send large amounts of email. It integrates email marketing, sales, e-commerce, and even customer service.

Automatic responses in general:

Because email marketing applications are available as hosted solutions, businesses don’t have to worry about using their internal systems to send messages, managing their mail server, or backing up their database. Most importantly, they don’t have to worry about legal issues or CAN-SPAM compliance. With these third-party systems, all of that is done for them. Once the email system is set up with the chosen provider, the next step is to develop the email list. As email is the main method of communication online. You must have a website that captures leads and sales, nothing is more important than the email marketing system behind it.

Creating a “subscribe” form:

You create the subscription form within the autoresponder. You choose the type of form you want, edit the wording, and the system provides you with code that you can cut and paste into your website.

Of the five systems above, I recommend AWeber primarily for its reliability and ease of use. They also have a very neat “lightbox” feature that allows you to set up a subscription form without needing to change your website design. They also have good tutorials that take you step by step through the process of setting up and using the system.

What kind of emails: HTML or plain text?

What does this really mean? Basically with HTML you can send messages with text plus graphics and banners etc. With plain text it’s just text.

Ideally, you’d like to send your messages using HTML and graphics for maximum impact, just like in print brochures and direct mail. This works fine, however there are a few things to be aware of with HTML email messages:

1. a lot of people will only accept plain text email and have “images” disabled in their email accounts. If you send them HTML emails, they’ll only see the words and not the graphics…not really the impression you want to convey.
2. In general, most communicate in plain text (ie, just words). It’s more personal and more likely to be opened and read.
3. Plain text also has its drawbacks. For example, you may not use all the means at your disposal to convey your message, such as headlines, photos, images, etc.
4. I recommend you start with PlainText

Building email lists through offline methods

Every business, both large and small, should build their email list both offline and online.

A good example of this is a point of sale that deals directly with customers. Staff could ask their customers if they want to sign up for Internet specials. Staff could even wear a badge that says “Have you heard about our Internet offers? When the customer asks a staff member what the internet offers are, they say they change all the time, so it’s best to email them every time they change… do you want to be on our email list? Your Staff can capture the email information on a small card specially prepared for it or on the part of the receipt that the business keeps. This method is a bit slow, but over time it will grow significantly. This same basic strategy can be used for any business where there is direct customer contact.

Summary:

Email marketing for small businesses is vital and over 90% of them are. No using email marketing at all, and the others are not doing very well. As a small business owner, you can get ahead of your competition by taking advantage of email marketing.