It will obviously be impossible for small businesses to match the marketing budget of larger companies and industry leaders. Therefore, small business owners are forced to find cost-effective ways to keep up with their competition. Since the dawn of the internet, email marketing has been the go-to for the most affordable way to reach online audiences. However, online trends will change over time, and email marketing has undergone a slight transformation.
Nowadays, spamming user inboxes won't get you very far. Due to our 44 years of experience in marketing and consulting, the Concept Marketing Group can provide you with the tools and advice you need to reach more customers. To help you avoid rookie mistakes and formulate a winning marketing strategy, here are 7 small business email marketing tips for 2023.
Before you start
You will need to do some planning and prep work for your email marketing strategy to succeed. Emails can be incredibly efficient and cost-effective, but they are far from a magic solution. You must realize what email marketing is good for and when to use them. However, due to their low cost and efficiency, you can use emails to supplement any other marketing strategy you plan to run. Here is what you should do before launching your email marketing:
· Have a way to generate leads. One of the best strategies for generating leads for email marketing is to have a strong CTA on the landing page of your website.
· Make it easy for people to sign up. Have signup links on all pages of your website. Do your best to simplify and streamline the forms users need to fill out while signing up.
· Separate leads by category. Not all leads are going to hold the same value for your business. Therefore, you should separate leads by priority or how close they are to make a purchase.
· Create email lists. Lastly, once you have gone through the above steps, you can create dedicated email lists. Carefully use the data you've gathered to create lists that deliver results.
Here are 7 small business email marketing tips for 2023:
1. Use catchy subjects
The attention span of online audiences is limited, meaning you will have very little time to make an excellent first impression. It would be best if you used creative writing to capture the interest of your audience. Moreover, the subject line should be short and catchy. It would be best if you managed to resist the urge to cram too much information in the subject line. Try showing some restraint in the body of the email. Instead of overloading the message with information, you can use links that lead customers to the relevant pages on your website.
2. Include user-created content in your emails
Content marketing is by no means a new trend; however, as anyone who's dabbled in marketing can tell you – creating content is hard. Small business owners probably don't have the budget to outsource their content creation and hire a team of experienced writers to publish articles on their websites regularly. For this reason, one of the most essential small business email marketing tips is to rely on user-created content. You can share social proof, such as customer reviews, testimonials, and product purchase information (such as which products are frequently purchased together). If you have a large social media following or regularly interact with your customers, you can include photos of them using your products or services.
3. Track your email performance
It's always a good idea to track how any form of marketing is performing and make subtle adjustments. Thankfully, many software tools are available to help you keep track of your email marketing. The experts from moverstech.com suggest using CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to monitor your emails' performance and track customer behavior. CRM software can also help you with email template generation and even automate mundane tasks such as data entry. Saving time is always essential, but it can be critical for small businesses that commonly don't have large marketing, sales, and customer relations departments.
4. Test different copies
Since email marketing is reasonably affordable, you can use it as the perfect testing ground for various creative ideas. Many email tools and resources can help you make the most of your email marketing. However, even performing simple A/B tests and using the copy that gets better results can work wonders for your bottom line.
5. Include visual elements
Who says that emails have to be boring walls of text? You can include images and videos to make your email marketing more interesting. However, it would help if you were careful about the size of the messages you send to users. Most people read their emails on their phones, so make sure all the image files are lightweight and don't take up too much bandwidth. You should, of course, link to videos so that users can watch them at their own pace.
6. Personalize your messages
Sending a bunch of generic emails isn't going to grab your users' attention. Instead of mass advertising, you should use direct mail marketing to deliver a personalized offer to your users. Being a small business owner shouldn't stop you from adjusting messages to increase their appeal to specific user groups. If you have done your due diligence by separating leads by category, you can target specific groups of leads with customized emails.
7. Don't overdo it
This is a piece of catch-all advice you can apply to everything else we've written here. Do everything in moderation, and give your marketing time to show results. It's okay to make changes if you think your email marketing isn't performing well, but you shouldn't change too many things at once. Likewise, when including images in your emails, just one or two pictures with matching colors that feature your products should suffice.
Wrapping up our list of small business email marketing tips
As you can see, emails are a versatile and powerful tool that you can use to boost your other marketing efforts. What makes them particularly interesting for small businesses is their low cost, effectiveness, and level of control. We hope you can use the advice we presented in our list of 7 small business email marketing tips for 2022 to grow your customer base and improve your bottom line.