Email marketing tips for small businesses
Email marketing is a fantastic way to connect with your customers and increase purchases. Here’s what you need to know to get started.
Stay compliant
Before you start sending emails, you need to make sure that you’re being GDPR compliant. Your customers need to give clear consent to email marketing in order to join your mailing list.
This means no pre-ticked boxes, and no assumed consent. Instead, give your customers the opportunity to receive marketing emails with opt in at checkout, or with a sign up form on your website.
You also need to give your subscribers the clear option to unsubscribe from your mailing list. This can be a simple link in the footer at the bottom of your email.
Use an email marketing platform
To create professional, personalised emails, you should choose an email marketing platform. There are free and low cost options depending on how many subscribers you have and which features you want to use.
Email marketing platforms can be really easy to use, and help you create branded emails that will engage your subscribers. You’ll also get all the metrics you need on how successful your campaign is.
Personalise your emails
Personalising emails using customer data can be really engaging. If you use a CRM, you can often connect this to your email marketing platform to use your customer data.
Some great examples of personalisation include:
- Using your customer’s first name
- Recommending products based on previous purchases
- Triggered emails based on customer behaviour
Keep it short and sweet
To capture your subscribers’ attention, keep your emails short and to the point. This goes for subject lines too!
Your subject line shouldn’t be more than 70 characters long. This means you should be able to read it in the inbox without any important information getting cut off.
Short emails are more likely to be read. Use attention grabbing images and clever copy to tell your subscribers what they need to know without taking up too much time.
Include a call to action
Think about what you want your subscribers to do after reading your email. Whether it’s purchasing a product, booking a demo or getting in touch, your email should have a clear call to action. Make it obvious and easy for your subscribers to complete the action by using a button at the end of your email.
Measure your success
Checking your metrics will give you a great insight into how your emails are performing. If you use an email marketing tool, you’ll be able to see how many people open your email, click on your call to action and lots of other useful data.
If you want, you can also track your subscribers behaviour on your website using UTM tracking on your links. If you use Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see whether the subscribers are staying on your website or purchasing products.
Metrics can be used to constantly improve your email marketing. You can see what kind of emails are popular, which subject lines encourage people to open the emails and whether your content encourages clicks.
Use automation
Automation is really useful when you want to encourage certain customer behaviour. If you use an email marketing tool which integrates with your CRM, you have a lot of options.
One simple automation is creating an email campaign which is triggered when someone subscribes to your email list. This could be one or several emails introducing your product or service, and welcoming your new customer.
Other automation options include triggered emails based on customer behaviour. Abandoned cart emails are one example.
The benefit of automated emails is that once you’ve set them up, you can just let the emails run! Of course, you should check your metrics and optimise the emails where you can see improvement is needed.
Types of email marketing campaigns
There are lots of different email marketing campaigns that you can run. Here are a few examples:
Lead generation
Lead generation campaigns are used to encourage leads to become customers. These leads would either subscribe to your list on on your website, or during a purchase where the cart was abandoned.
Lead generation emails can come in many forms. Either offering useful content to download with a button on your website or follow up emails to encourage an abandoned purchase. But, the most important part is to share the benefits of your product or service!
Welcome email
Welcome emails are perfect for new customers. Introduce your business, and make it clear if there are any next steps for your subscribers to take. If you offer a software or a service, this could be the time to onboard your customers and show them how to use your product.
Email newsletter
Sending a newsletter to your subscribers will keep your brand in mind. Share latest news, helpful articles or new products in a quick round up to get subscribers to visit your website or make a purchase.
Promotional email
Got a new product? Having a sale? A promotional email is what you need. This email focuses on one announcement and is straight to the point. Try not to spam users with promotional emails, and instead choose which important information you want them to know.
