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Small Business Email Marketing Tips

In today's day and age, small businesses need to leverage any tool that they can to build their brand and customer base. Email marketing was, is, and will be one of the most powerful tactics that professionals use to acquire leads and make sales online. Considering that there are emailing tools that are essentially free for businesses just starting out, there is simply no good reason not to use email marketing as part of your selling strategy.

If you are willing to invest enough time to start out or improve your emailing campaigns, then this platform is sure to be a valuable asset for you in the long term. Here are our top email marketing tips for small businesses:

#1 Make efforts to gain subscribers
The first issue you should direct your attention to is how to grow an audience that cares about your business and will eventually buy from you. You can do so by including an email sign-up form on your website that can either be easily available on your homepage or appear in the form of a pop-up.

In order to attract subscribers that have an interest in your product or service, you can include an offer or a relevant resource, depending on your industry and business goals. While a "10% off your first order" offer will be more effective for e-commerce websites, B2B (business to business) clients might be more interested in a helpful whitepaper.

#2 Send emails that your subscribers want to see
This might sound pretty straightforward, but businesses often make the mistake of sending unwanted information. Even though you might think everything your company does is interesting, your subscribers likely disagree.

A simple way to ensure your audience is receiving the right content is by using email segmentation. This means splitting up your list in smaller groups based on demographics, psychographics, or behavioral data.

You can put together a customer journey map to clearly determine what actions signify a certain step in the marketing and sales funnel. For example, if your subscriber clicks on an offer in an email, then they are most likely interested in purchasing. In this instance, you can send a social proof email to convince them that buying your product or service is the right choice for them.

While your instincts might be telling you that subscribers do not want too many promotional emails, data shows us that is not the case. According to a study by Marketing Sherpa, more than 90% of people would like to receive promotional emails from the companies they do business with. This means special offers and sales campaigns, as well as new product launches that might interest to them.

#3 Make your emails look good
It's true that the content of your emails is what convinces subscribers to buy. However, if your email looks bad, your audience will not even bother to read it. Make sure that you are sending visually appealing emails, but do not overcomplicate it. If the design is clean and aligned with your brand identity, then this is all you need. Simplicity is key here.

Even more important than a cohesive look is making sure your emails are mobile responsive. If an image does not scale right or your font is too small to read on a mobile device, you have a problem. Since people use their phones to do virtually everything, mobile responsiveness is as essential for emails as it is for websites.

#4 Use A/B testing to improve email strategy
The best way to better your email marketing strategy is by looking at the stats. Open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rates are all important indicators of your newsletter's success. By keeping track of what your audience responds to, you can notice patterns and make changes to accommodate the preferences of your subscribers.

One way to improve as you go is using A/B email marketing testing to your advantage. This method splits your audience into two groups and changes just one element in your email to test which one yields better results. Test your email subject line, your offer, or even your personalization tactic to see what works best for you and your business.

Start out with these four tips, and never lose track of your goals when devising your strategy. After all, email marketing is just another tool to help you make sales and increase your business.