Small businesses need email marketing; in fact, they may need it even more than large businesses with big budgets. Large businesses can afford to indulge in more expensive forms of marketing, such as advertising on television or national radio, but smaller businesses with smaller budgets need other, more targetable, personalised marketing to connect with, maintain and attract their core customers.
Email marketing can be used to drive traffic to your website, sell products, educate your customers, inform them of new services, give them updates, make announcements, gather feedback, and so much more. Ultimately, it’s the backbone of your marketing activities, second only to your website.
Your website is your shop window, but if no one knows it’s there, how are they expected to buy from you? That’s the beauty of email marketing: it allows you to target your audience specifically to signpost the way to your website. It lets you personalise your message so it speaks directly to your customer. Whereas there’s an element of ‘scatter gun’ about the TV or radio approach – you never really know who is listening, and you can’t necessarily measure the impact of those campaigns; with email, you can see exactly who opened your email (and who didn’t!), and who clicked on which calls-to-action. Through audience segmentation, you can send emails advertising products, services, discounts, etc., to a relevant section of your audience so you’re not bombarding people with irrelevant offers. No faster way to lose your customer base than with that kind of bombardment!
Email marketing can require an initial outlay, it’s true. You need the right tools, and depending on how many contacts you have, how many emails you’re sending each month, and how much functionality you want to have, your email marketing tool will probably incur a monthly fee (although there are several free ones out there to get you started – see our earlier article). So, why not just keep plugging away on social media? After all, social media is free, and you can still see where your leads are coming from. All true; however, you can’t control who receives your message; that’s up to the social media algorithms, and they can be tough to beat, especially as a small business. With email marketing, as well as controlling the message you’re sending, you get to control who sees your message: it lands directly into their inbox – or it will do if you’ve set up your DNS records and sending domain correctly. (If that sounds confusing, give us a call and speak to one of the team about our Email Audit Service.) Additionally, not everyone opens their social media accounts every day, but almost everyone accesses their email daily, sometimes several times, so there’s a better chance your message will be seen and, therefore, opened and read.
Here’s the thing to remember: done right, the return on investment for email marketing far outstrips any other form of marketing: on average, for every £1 spent, you generate around £40.
So, here is a quick recap of what you can use email marketing for:
- Build customer loyalty
- Introduce new products
- Offer discounts
- Educate your customers
- Gather feedback
- Share information
And here’s a quick recap of what email marketing can do for small businesses:
- Targeted messaging – better hit rates
- Personalisation – connects directly with your audience
- Control – get the message to people who are interested rather than a social media ‘spray and pray’ approach
- Increased visibility – most people open their email every day
- Unbeatable return on investment – more sales, higher profits
If you need help with any part of your email marketing, from choosing an email marketing tool to template building, from an overall audit to campaign strategy, Email-Postman is here for you.
Email-Postman – email marketing that delivers!
Shaun Reynolds has been specialising in email marketing since 2005 and, in February 2019, launched Email-Postman. Since then, we’ve helped over 100 clients across a range of industries and sectors build successful email marketing campaigns across various email marketing platforms. For further information or to discuss getting help with your email marketing, you can arrange a free call-back today by clicking here!
