We have all witnessed the rise of social media in recent years. It has definitely opened up new avenues for marketing your products and services. But, with everyone running after twitter and facebook, that space is also becoming crowded and expensive to get good returns on your marketing dollars.
With strict budget constraints, small business marketers must find niche channels to get their messages delivered to their customers.
For small business marketers, there is need to rise above the noise in social media space and look for effective marketing channels that can also fit in their budget.
Type of content
1. Email is old but still gold
2. Emails are cheaper than Google ads
3. Emails can be highly personalized
4. Emails can be scheduled
5. Pointers to set up successful email marketing for small business
Email is old but still gold
We don’t talk about it every day. But in the backdrop, email is not only active, but thriving and growing every day.
Every day hundreds of thousands of new people are connecting to the internet – many with their mobile devices. One of the very first tool that these people will start using is Email.
Emails are cheaper than Google ads
If properly done, email marketing can be completely free of cost! But even if you pay for some email marketing tools, chances are that they will not be as expensive as Google, Facebook, Youtube ads.
It doesn’t cost much to send an email. But then the bigger challenge is getting someone to read that email. Here is a powerful tactic to make sure that they do.
Disclaimer: This is true for the cases where you have a mailing list to begin with. Building a mailing list, has its own cost and also its own advantages.
Emails can be highly personalized
Unlike Google ads, when you send an email to someone, you know exactly who that prospect is. In all likelihood, you have their name, company name, interests etc. in a mailing list spreadsheet.
Obviously, this is a great opportunity for personalized communication. This kind of personalized messaging is very effective in B2B marketing & sales, where you want to build a relationship with the customer.
Emails can be scheduled
Sending emails at a particular time in the week definitely helps to improve the opening rate. But more importantly, you can also track your communication history with a prospect and schedule particular emails to be sent at appropriate time to nudge your relationship even further.
This is possible with email marketing, simply because of how you are able to track opening rate, clicks, website visits, logins and purchases done by a single unique email address. This forms a complete record of all the interactions that a prospect has had with your product / services.
This record tells you the exact status of the prospect, how far down the sales funnel he has travelled, if he has any questions or if he is finally ready to make the purchase.
Your next email can be sent to him accordingly.
This way all your communication is always contextual, sure to keep your audience engaged. Avoiding any out of context noise, improves the reputation of your brand and overall clout that you have with your audience.
Pointers to set up successful email marketing for small business
To conclude, you don’t always need a big marketing budget to make a big impact. Smart use of a versatile tool like email can also be quite effective.
Small businesses have a smaller customer base, by definition. Hence it is easier to build a mailing list and manage email campaigns sent to a smaller group of people. Here are some pointers to make sure your email campaigns are effective.
- Personalize your emails, especially when you are working with smaller mailing list.
- Keep your communication contextual. Not only will this help to keep the current audience engaged, but also to boost the reputation of your email address and to earn you brownie points against spam filters.
- Use a short and clear email copy. Avoid these spam trigger words in your email. Use these email templates as a reference point.
- Track your communication history and schedule your emails accordingly.
- Invest in building email marketing lists. They may cost you in the near term. But mailing lists will give you great dividends in the long run.
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