The Basics of Email Marketing for Small Businesses

If you are reading this blog, you know that email marketing is one of the most effective tools for a small business, and it's also one of the least expensive forms of marketing. It's a virtual necessity to keep your name, brand and your products in front of prospects and current customers.

There are right and wrong ways to do it, however. When done right, customers look forward to the special offers, new products, and interesting content that each new email brings. When done wrong, it goes straight to the virtual trash bin with all of that unwanted spam.

So how do you do email marketing right? It all starts with your customer list.

Building Your Email List

Customers that have ordered from you have likely provided you with their email addresses already. That's the best place to start. 

To get new email addresses, create special offers or discounts to encourage visitors to your site and social media accounts to share them with you.

Just be sure to observe any government regulations regarding marketing emails; I highly suggest that you ask your visitors to voluntarily opt in to these. Not asking for permission can negatively affect your relationship with customers as well as increase of spam complaints against your email account.

What do You Put Into Your Emails?

Emails are most effective when you can target them to the individual needs and preferences of your customers. That means getting to know them.

Ideally, your first email shouldn't do a whole lot of marketing. Greet your customers, introduce yourself and your business to them and perhaps attach a welcome offer if appropriate.

Next, consider sending your customers a short set of questions or a survey about their preferences. You might attach another offer to this as an enticement to complete it. This isn't meant to snoop on your customers, but to find out what they'd like to hear from you in terms of communication. For example, ask what product categories they would like to receive news and offers about, or what type of special offers they like to see.

Emails aren't just about coupons and special offers, however. The demographic information you collect, such as location, gender and date of birth, can tell you which customers would like to hear news about new products in their categories of interest, or some content related to that topic that you create (like a blog post or a video).

How do You Manage Email Marketing Messages? 

So should you simply sit down, type out marketing emails and mass-mail them to your contacts list?

That is a possibility, but probably not the best or most efficient one for most businesses. Small businesses generally use email marketing services and software, such as MailChimp, Constant Contact or ConvertKit, to manage their marketing campaigns. These make the whole process much easier, and also give you all sorts of important reporting information (like open rates, click-through rates, etc,) about how recipients are interacting with your marketing messages.

Each of these services and tools is a little different, but they all have some standard features that any business will find useful. These include:

•   A contact database that allows you to attach all sorts of demographic information to each email address

•   Templates for different types of emails

•   The ability to schedule emails in advance to be sent at a specific time

•   A "widget" or snippet of code to add an email sign up to your site that allows visitors to opt in and out of marketing emails

•   The ability to keep separate lists for different types of customers; for example, new vs. current customers

In addition to these, one of the most important features of an email software service is its tracking tools. These tools can tell you whether or not customers open an email (known as open rate), at what time they open them, and what links (if any) they follow out of the email (known as click-through rate or CTR). With analytics tools in place, you can then track what users do on your site in response to each email.

Great Subject Lines to Get Customer Attention

As was touched on earlier, there are three main things that people tend to like to see in marketing emails: news about products they are interested in, discount offers, and content that is relevant to their interests.

Before you get to any of that, though, start with the subject line. This is the first thing people will see when you email them and determines whether or not they will even open the email. There are some basic elements that should always be in place.

The "FROM" fields should contain an easily recognizable company name and return email address so that customers know that it's not spam or a hacking attempt. It's OK to have a "no reply" email as the return address, just make sure that the domain and author clearly reflect your company name.

You should also avoid dollar and percentage signs as well as words like "bonus" or "free", at least at first. When these elements are in email headers from a new recipient, it can get your email automatically sent to the spam filter. Once you've successfully emailed a customer a few times and received some sort of response, it's safer to start adding things like percentage discount amounts or free offers as your address will have more of a "trusted" status with the recipient.

For a few years now, conventional wisdom has been to add the customer's first name to email subject lines in some way. It used to make the email stand out and seem more personal. However, at this point pretty much every company is doing this, so it no longer jumps out like it used to. It's not necessarily a bad thing to do, but it isn't as crucial as it used to be if you don't personally care for it as an approach.

Making Emails Work

There is a lot more to learn about marketing emails, such as composition and content. Those topics have a lot to do with your personal circumstances and creativity. Knowing how to build and maintain a list, use an email marketing service and craft strong subject lines is the lion's share of the work. Mastering these fundamentals is crucial to building your online business.

Need help implementing these strategies in your email marketing program?