Marketing your small business through email is an effective way to promote your brand without using much of your resources.
Rather than forms of marketing that float around on the internet and are seen only by those who happen to come into contact with them, email marketing is a way to directly reach your target market by putting whatever message it is you wish to communicate right into their inbox. However, people today are not prone to just go looking for others to just give out their email addresses to.
In order to collect valuable contact information from your target market in the form of email addresses, your small business must make subscribing to your emails appealing, and the content you provide must hold interest.
Make subscribing simple.
Wherever it is that your customers interact with your brand online (your website, social media accounts, blog, etc.), give them the option to subscribe to your email list there. Make it clear and easily visible everywhere you put it.
When someone visits your website’s homepage or clicks over to your blog, maybe have a prompt to subscribe appear on their screen. You could make the CTA button on your business’s Facebook page “Subscribe to Our Email List.” Definitely do not urge followers to subscribe to your brand’s email list in every social media post or with a pop-up on every page they click to on your website. You’ll scare them away.
Make it simple for your customers by having the subscribing option easy to see and clickable. Chances are they are not going to go on their own hunt for how to subscribe to your small business’s email list.
Let subscribers know what to expect from you.
Wherever you are giving your followers the option to subscribe to your email list, give them a sentence or two letting them know what they are signing up for. Give them a general idea of the type of content to expect from you and about how often to expect it.
If you send a welcome email out to new subscribers, which is a great way to make a further connection with them and confirm the action they just took in subscribing, also tell them here a little bit more about what they should be expecting from you. Get them excited and anticipating what your small business will send to their inbox!
Design your emails to fit your brand.
Consistency across all channels of media in the way you market your small business is what will really establish a strong brand identity. The design of the emails sent to your describers does not have to be exactly the same as that of your website, but it should be recognizable that it is associated with your brand.
Give your emails the proper colors and design to promote brand recognition for your small business with your email subscribers.
Give subscribers a call to action.
Successful marketing strategy includes giving the consumer a call to action. Show them how your product could prove useful in their typical day-to-day life. Present them with a coupon code or information on an upcoming sale. Get their attention in some way, then call them to the action of visiting your website to make a purchase or contact your business for more information.
When you have the attention of your audience members, you can then call them to “Shop now” or “Learn more here” by clicking on your website. The interaction they have with your strategically chosen site name, along with their engagement of your site’s content, gives them the opportunity to connect with you.
Through a call to action, the email marketing of your business is allowing your brand to further develop brand recognition and to drive traffic to your website.
Keep an organized content calendar.
Stay on top of your email marketing efforts (and avoid the potential stress of creating content in a time crunch) by keeping a calendar of what you are sending out when. By maintaining an organized calendar of email content, your small business is able to generate content in advance and have it ready to go out to subscribers at its designated time.
Also, by having a calendar of what you have sent out to your email subscribers in the past, you can hopefully keep from repeating what you have already sent them or from sending too similar of content too close together.
Think mobile!
We now live in a mobile society, both in that we are always on the go and that we are always connected to our mobile devices. As of spring 2017, a whopping 54 percent of all email is opened via mobile device. If you send your subscribers emails from your small business that are not compatible with their mobile device, it is highly likely that they will get deleted instantly.
Plus, if a subscriber opens an email and sees it is not compatible with their mobile device, they could very well never open another email from your business, or even unsubscribe from your list altogether. Make your email marketing mobile-friendly or your small business will quickly lose both the interest of and credibility in the eyes of your subscribers.
Utilizing email marketing properly is a great way to promote your small business and connect with its followers. Attract your target market with an honest offer of valuable and exclusive content through a subscription to your emails, and engage your subscribers with the quality content they want and expect from you.
