How to Succeed at Email Marketing
Email Marketing has been around for a long time - and it’s likely that you currently have an inbox full of messages from hundreds of businesses, all eager to tell you about new products, deals, and events. It’s clear from how many emails each of us get in a day that the top companies all agree email is worthy of investing in. But what about email marketing for small businesses?
Well first of all, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to market your business. A study in 2015 found that for every $1 spent on email marketing, there is a $38 return on investment. Many shoppers cite that email is the main way they find out about deals from their favorite stores.
Since there are SO MANY emails being sent and received every day, it can be hard to stand out in a full inbox. Luckily, partnering with a marketing agency like ProFusion means you always have up-to-date knowledge on email marketing best practices to help you stand out.
Get Started with Email Marketing
In order to get started with Email marketing, you’re going to need a list of people to email. The best way you’re going to see real results from email is when your list is full of people who specifically asked to get emails from you. Of course, you might look through your inbox and think “Well, I don’t want emails from most of these companies, and yet they keep emailing me.” So, of course there are email lists that are full of disengaged contacts. But those disengaged contacts are REALLY unlikely to convert. And conversion is always our ultimate goal.
To build an email list of engaged contacts, try the following:
- Create a signup form on your website. We recommend either putting this in the footer so that it’s on every page, or in a pop-up, so it gets the user’s attention before they exit your site.
- If you have a brick & mortar, or are at a conference, you can have a good old-fashioned sign-up sheet. Just give people a place to put their information if they want to know more about your business.
- Use social media! If you have an engaged social media following, you can share your sign-up form on your social media channels.
But wait - I’ve heard of just buying an email list. Can’t I do that?
Physically, can you buy a list? Certainly. Lists are for sale. Should you? Absolutely not.
Purchased lists are ineffective. The people on that list don’t know you and didn’t ask for you to send them emails. They are unlikely to care about your offers, and are pretty likely to be emailed by someone they don’t know and didn’t give their information to. They can also mark you as spam.
If you send emails to a list of people whose contact info you bought, many of the emails will get identified as spam and you'll also get high unsubscribe rates. Some email spam filters will flag an email campaign if anyone with the same IP has sent spam in the past, meaning once you’re considered a spammer, your emails aren’t going to land in a lot of inboxes.
To make sure your list is full of people who won’t mark you as spam:
- Don’t use third-party lists. This includes purchased or rented mailing lists, and lists scraped from third-party sources, including public websites.
- Get Permission! Everyone on your list should have opted in to receive emails from you.
- Make sure all your emails contain an unsubscribe link.
Email content
Now that you have a list of people eagerly awaiting your emails...You just have to decide what to send them.
Email content can vary wildly from industry to industry. We like to send our blog posts out to our email list so that people can get some fun marketing advice in their inbox, even if they don’t check our blog regularly. Some companies send out information on sales and specials. Others like to announce what’s going on in the community. The best way to determine what to send is to ask “What does my target audience want?” If you can answer that and provide them with what they want in their inbox, Do it! If you need some help, give us a call.
How Often to Send Emails
The next problem to conquer is how often to send emails. We send ours out once a week. But monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly...all of these are fine. The cadence really depends on how often you feel you have something to say. If you have a lot of people asking questions, and requiring more information - you’re going to want to send more frequently. But if you only have one sale a quarter, or you just don’t have that much to share - less frequently is totally fine.
We’re here to help. Whether you just need assistance in setting up your Mail Chimp account or you need us to do the copy-writing and list management, we’ve got you covered. Contact us to learn more about how you can use email marketing to promote your website and business.