Finding ways of attracting new customers and retaining current ones is an essential priority for small business owners. As your business expands, you may be looking for new ways to keep in touch with your client base and build up your brand. Email marketing is one of the most budget-friendly and effective ways to reach your customer base. It can drive traffic to your site, showcase the business and nurture your relationships with your clients.
A well-designed and executed email newsletter can benefit your small business in a big way. Here are some basics you need to know to make the most of your efforts.
Focus on content.
Determine why you want to send a newsletter. Consider what you’d like to accomplish with each touch point. Once you have a reason figured out, the other pieces will come together. Here are some content ideas you can use, so your business stays top of mind:
- Brand awareness, education, industry thought leadership
- Showcasing community involvement, invitations for customers to join you for volunteer efforts
- Occasional coupon/ flash sale opportunities
- Customer testimonials which make a business case for your product/services
Create a call to action.
Ensure all information is relevant and has a call to action. Once you have a reason and content, determine what your customers should do with it. A well-written email with call to action buttons can drive sales and increase revenue. Here are some guidelines:
- Be sure it is clear your audience knows what they should do. Click the link, consume information, share the news – whether that information sends them to a coupon code or your social media channels, be clear with your intent.
- Always aim for engagement: the beauty of a newsletter is that you can switch up the format, content type or frequency to keep things interesting.
Deliver consistent quality.
In a digital age of information sharing, consistent and quality messaging is a must. Each time you push content to a person’s inbox you have one chance to gain their trust. There is a lot of background noise to break through out in the digital world. Make every email count. Here are ways to do it:
- Layout needs to be clean and easy to scan with the eyes. 66% of emails are read on mobiles, and 34% of emails are still read on desktops. Keep this in mind when you plan the layout.
- Stay on brand with consistent messaging.
- Make sure it is responsive – mobile / tablet friendly.
Evaluate what’s working.
It’s important to measure your efforts regarding which links customers are clicking. Think of the evaluation as a way of steering your efforts, so you are always sharing content and topics in areas which resonate most with your audience.
- After each send, take note of what your customers are engaging with after a few sends you should notice a trend. Ride that trend and give the customers what they are looking for each time.
- As you develop your layouts and content plans, you can start to dig into different niches and targeting.
There are several budget-friendly tools available to help build and even automate your email newsletter efforts. As your business grows, your marketing efforts should too. We help small businesses in varying stages of expansion, whether it’s a need for working capital for a big marketing push, facility expansion or to cover inventory before a busy season – we are here when you need us.
