Email marketing is still one of the most powerful methods to build a relationship with your audience and reach them with your offers. In this article, I will give you some email marketing tips for small businesses, that will help you to build the email list and increase the open rates.
Email marketing tips for small businesses: why you need an email list?
You can build your audience on different platforms for example on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram Twitter, Pinterest, etc but it will never be an asset that you really own. These platforms can decide to close your account any time and then you won’t be able to reach your audience anymore. They can also change the algorithm which may negatively influence your reach. But if you have your own email list, you are in control of everything. You can decide when and how you want to contact you subscribers and you will always have access to those email unless they decide to opt-out of your list.
Email marketing tips for small businesses: how to build an email list?
The best way to build your email list is to offer some kind of lead magnet. A lead magnet is something that is valuable to your recipients and that you offer them in exchange for their email address.
Examples of lead magnets:
- free training
- free course
- PDF with tips on the selected subject
- Cheatsheet
- Consultation call
- Discount Code
The best way to offer your lead magnet is to build a simple landing page with an opt-in form. Once an opt-in form is filled in, the email marketing software that you connected to it sends an email with your lead magnet. You can use different email marketing software to set this kind of automation, for example,e GetResponse or ConvertKit.
Email marketing tips for small businesses: what kind of emails should you send?
Of course, the primary type of email that you would like to send is a sales email. But you have to remember that in order to be successful with email marketing you first need to build trust and relationship with your subscribers. In order to do that, you will also have to send emails that simply provide value to your audience. And the ratio between vale emails and sales emails should be approximately 80/20. Try to think about email marketing as of a long term strategy, don’t spam your list with offers all the time, provide value and build a relationship with them and you will see that it will bring a lot better sales results in the long term.
How to increase the open rates?
There are 5 big tips that I want to share with you in this article, that will help to increase the open rates of your emails.
Email marketing tips for small businesses: email your list on a regular basis
First of all, it is very important to email your list on a regular basis. In this way, you ba build a relationship with your subscribers and they start to recognise your name. If you stop emailing them for 2 months, for example, they may simply forget who you are and will not be willing to open your emails because of that.
Email marketing tips for small businesses: clean your list
Another important thing is to clean your list o a regular basis. The lower your open rate the lower the overall rating of the address from which you’re sending emails will be. This will furthermore negatively influence your open rate. The truth is that if somebody doesn’t open any of your emails during a month, he probably never will. There are many reasons for that. Your email could have simply reached the spam folder and now you’re hitting the spam box all the time. Your subscriber could also input a spam/ fake email address. In any case, it is not a valuable email for you and it’s better to get rid of it. I explain it in this video here >>
Email marketing tips for small businesses: test all your emails
The third tip is to always test your emails to make sure they are not going to spam folder and also not to the promotional folder. The easier way to do it is to simply set a separate email address for tests and check whether our email is reaching the primary inbox. Email marketing tips for small businesses: test all your emails.
Email marketing tips for small businesses: test all your emails
Another good way to make sure your emails will always reach the primary inbox is to ask people for replay. Of course, it should be a very short answer, preferably yeas or no, because otherwise, people may not be willing to take time to replay to you. But I can assure you that if it is a simple question, they will replay. And it will be a signal that this message is not a spam and not a promotion because recipients are replaying to it.
Email marketing tips for small businesses: test all your emails
I think I don’t have to convince you that personalised messages are far more effective than non personalised. Therefore an email with receipient’s name in the title will be more likely opened. And it is very easy to set such personalisations in the emial marketing software. I am showing how to do it in GetResponse at the end of this video>>.
Email marketing tips for small businesses: the summary
- Build your list by offering a lead magnet
- Provide value first
- Email your list on a regular basis
- Clean your email list
- Test all emails before sending them
- Ask for replays
- Personalize your emails
Read also:
Email Marketing Tips: Avoid Spam Filters >>
GetResponse Review – all you need to know>>
ConvertKit Review – all you need to know>>
