Email marketing is a great way to build relationships with your customers and prompt sales. However you may be wondering why you should consider an email marketing strategy for your business in today’s social media world? Well, for a start you still need an email address to sign up for a social media account. People also check their emails regularly throughout the day, out of office hours, on holiday and even more so on smartphones (43% of email is now opened on a mobile device). Therefore if you want to be visible to your customers at a time that suits them, a permission-based email marketing strategy could be just the way to achieve it.
Here are my 5 top benefits of Email Marketing for Small Business:
1. Build Relationships and Trust
It is no secret that people buy from those they like and trust. A regular email communication from your company can help to build these relationships especially if you provide something useful to your readers. Show your personality a little and create engaging content that helps build familiarity. You can also use your campaigns to add value and and establish yourself as the trusted expert on your subject matter. Don’t go overboard with pushy sales messages though as this will drive your readers to unsubscribe very quickly!
2. Increase Brand Awareness
Regular communications help keep your business and brand fresh in the eyes of your customer. Here is your opportunity to keep them informed of your latest products and services along with the benefits. By doing this you will build credibility with your customers which increases the likelihood that the next time they need your products or services they buy from you over your competitors. Also, as you are targeting fans of your brand (they will have signed up to receive your updates), your conversion rates will be much higher.
3. Drive Traffic to your Website
Your website is likely the hub of all your marketing communications and its success will be dependent on the amount of traffic it receives. Email marketing is a great way to increase this traffic, via carefully crafted content. You can include links to your products or services within the email text, or include attractive buttons to encourage click through to buy your products directly. If you have a blog you can also send an email broadcast to your list providing a notification of new posts. This will then give you a wider audience that has read your content, by increasing likelihood of comments and social media sharing.
4. Cost Effectiveness
Compared to other offline marketing channels email marketing can be incredibly cost effective. There are no print and postage costs or expensive fees paid for mass media advertising channels. You may have to pay a small software license fee to send and track your emails but the costs are far lower than the mainstream channels. It has also been shown to give a fantastic return on investment to businesses. In 2013, a Direct Marketing Association survey reported that email marketing typically returns £21.48 for every £1 invested.
5. Easy to Setup
There are many email marketing services available which offer step by step wizards to set up your email campaign quickly and easily. You just choose a nice template, add your branding and content, choose your database and your email is ready to go. However it is better for branding if you have a web designer create a custom template for you, that you can update easily each time you want to send your email. Some email marketing services charge a small fee for sending out the emails and others are free up to a certain amount, such as Mailchimp. Experiment with a few to find out what is right for you and your business.
Do you use Email Marketing for your business? I hope my article has given you some food for thought if not. Either way, I would love to hear your experiences in the comments below!
This post is written by Rachel Toy, a freelance content writing specialist based near Aylesbury, Bucks, UK. If you would like to learn more about how effective Content Writing can help your business email me on rachel@racheltoywrites.co.uk