As a small business owner, you undoubtedly have a lot on your plate. People demand you to be an expert in several fields. Digital marketing is one of them since email still remains one of the most lucrative ways to contact potential customers.
Digital marketing is considered unnecessary or expensive for small businesses, but this is just poor thinking. It can help you foster better relationships with your leads, ultimately leading to customer trust and a powerful brand name. Here we display some of the most popular hacks for bringing your email marketing efforts to life and hitting the top.
1. Digital marketing software
Owning a small business entails trying to make your life as easy as possible. Acquiring the appropriate software saves you the trouble of creating your emails from scratch or hiring a specialist. Email marketing platforms offer you the chance to create beautiful newsletters without being an expert. Among other valuable features, you can use digital marketing software to:
- Add subscribers to your email lists and organize existing contacts through list segmentation or custom fields
- Test your email campaigns design and content before dispatching them and check corresponding reports
- Monitor campaign performance through valuable metrics like open rates, recipient activity, member engagement, etc.
- Take advantage of ready to use email templates, by adding or editing elements through drag and drop editors
- Create effective landing pages that lead visitors to the heart of your business: purchasing your product or service
- Design automation workflows, with high targeted newsletters, and monitor how your audience engages with your brand through certain actions they perform
2. GDPR-compliant email lists
Your email lists being GDPR compliant is a prerequisite. This means you have to ensure that your recipients’ email addresses are verified and they have confirmed they want to receive your newsletters. If possible, feature a sign-up form on your website or social media pages to have users directly subscribe to your lists.
Ideally, choose to do so through a double opt-in process, which requires recipients to give you consent through a confirmation email. Adding this extra step is worth the trouble. It helps you send relevant content to your new subscribers and improves your deliverability. On the contrary, tactics like buying lists online can harm your deliverability rates and your brand’s reputation.
To further enhance your reputation, don’t neglect to provide an unsubscribe option inside your newsletters. Make it clear and visible so that your recipients know where to click in case they no longer wish to receive news from you. Also, go for a simple and uncomplicated unsubscription process. These methods paint your brand as honest and trustworthy.
3. Responsive email design with visuals
In an era when visuals have conquered everything, you can’t ignore them in your marketing efforts. Words do matter, but your audience looks for an appealing, interactive design as well: images, graphics, videos.
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Video marketing isn’t much of a trend for small businesses, though. Therefore, once you create high-quality videos, you will already be ahead of your competition. Certainly, it demands effort and you might need professional help or video-editing + voice over software to master it.
Visual marketing also goes hand in hand with mobile optimization. There is no use in having a responsive design with videos and interactive elements if they don’t work on smaller screens. Over 50% of your email recipients are mobile device users. The last thing you want is this audience having trouble reading your emails or losing valuable information.
So, creating a design that responds to your users’ screens is a top priority. It makes your leads’ journey easy, enhancing user experience and helping you drive more conversions.
4. Consistency and personalization
Digital marketing is about getting to know your prospects and having them know about you. To achieve it, you need unique and consistent outreach. Build your brand’s awareness through a loud and clear voice that makes you stand out. In order for your customers to promote your business proposition, they need to be certain of what it’s all about.
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No doubt your competitors are out there too, but if your proposition is genuine, it will appear to be more valuable. You need a consistent brand tone in all your marketing communications: website, email campaigns, blog posts, social media. As regards the last part, you should see to building a coherent social media strategy. It is the perfect place to establish new connections and nurture existing ones.
An equally important factor is keeping communications personal. Small businesses have the advantage of being closer to their prospects and using a human brand voice. If you are in need of their attention, demonstrate that you have been paying attention to their needs too.
Sending out batch emails won’t get you the results you’re looking for. Write personalized content, relevant to each recipient’s needs. We are past the days that people settle for having their name shown in the subject line, too. They demand research on your end so that they read customized newsletters that give them what they desire.
Invest in automated emails, which will be triggered by certain actions your subscribers take. And if you’re thinking that the keyword here is “investment”, note that there are several affordable email marketing services that help you craft personalized content and design. Leverage the customized elements you can add to your newsletters; this way, you show your customers that they matter. Acknowledging that it isn’t just another corporation that reaches out to them but people will turn them into loyal customers.
5. Engaging subject lines
Let’s take for granted that your recipients receive countless emails. Therefore, you must think of your email subject line as your cover. Engaging subject lines directly affect your open rates and your deliverability. Pique your prospects’ interest with short (within 6 and 10-word limit) and precise subject lines that match the newsletter content.
If, for instance, your email is about an offer or discount, your subject line should contain the specifics required, while also generating a sense of urgency. It’s also the perfect place to apply the FOMO (fear of missing out) strategy, using words like “one-time offer” or “just for a few days”. Such wording urges your subscribers to act on that feeling by opening the email.
Last but not least, don’t neglect A/B testing for your subject lines. Through this tactic, you can check which of the two different versions you send out to different list segments fares better and send the selecting winner to the rest of your audience.
6. Balanced email sequence
There is a delicate balance between overwhelming your recipients and leaving them in the dark. If you keep sending helpful newsletters at a certain frequency, your subscribers will eventually look forward to receiving the next one. It’s better to decide the email sequence according to your business type and needs.
Since digital marketing is a long-term process, you must benefit from a marketing calendar. It helps you keep track of all relevant details, like release dates or resources allocation. Discovering the best-performing day and time for your newsletters is also key to success. Mid-days tend to perform better, but be sure to run your own tests to check the best sending time for your target market.
While the above aspects are crucial, never forget that quality always comes before quantity. Don’t just send an email if you don’t have something important to say; it will only annoy your recipients, resulting in your newsletters going into the spam folder. When you create and send out relevant content, they will know that whenever you communicate, it is to announce something worth reading.
Conclusion
Successfully marketing your small business always presents challenges. New trends change constantly, making it difficult to know where to best channel your time and money. There are various tactics available and endless opportunities to get people talking about your business.
To figure out where to start, try the hacks mentioned above. With many small businesses going digital these days, yours must keep up as well. By building a cohesive digital marketing strategy, you can -and absolutely will- conquer the small business arena.
