For SMBs looking to grow their businesses but are unsure where to begin, email marketing campaigns offer a low-cost way to reach prospects and customers. Email marketing has a low barrier to entry than other marketing platforms because it doesn’t require advanced technology or design skills. It’s also faster to create email content than many other marketing materials. Email marketing is flexible and effective for marketing products, services or both. It’s also a budget-friendly approach to marketing with a lower out-of-pocket cost, simple tracking and measurement, and a higher potential ROI (return on investment) than other marketing strategies.
Here are seven tips.
1. Try market segmentation.
Unlike billboards (because you have no control over who drives on the freeway), email marketing hits its target every time. In fact, 99% of consumers check their email every day. Therefore, it’s the perfect medium for marketing segmentation. In other words, you can tailor your message for each target audience.
One common way to do this is by age group. Ivan Veta, SEO specialist at Scopic Software, found this to be a helpful method for his clients, as it allowed them to switch up their strategies according to generational marketing preferences.
You can even create multi-segments or segments in several layers.
“Break lists up depending on where your contacts are in the buyer’s journey, and segment based on what you know about them,” said Maria Mora, a content designer for the new product experimentation team at Meta. “Then tailor messages that are appropriate to those contacts at the right time.”
Additional segmentation criteria include geographic location, age, education level, job function, industry, customer persona and interactions with past campaigns.
2. Make it personable.
The more personalized an email, the less likely it is to get lost in an inbox of spam. There’s an easy way to make an email more personable – have it come from a person.
As a side benefit, this helps differentiate your company as a small business.
Some email marketing software even allows senders to include the recipient’s name in the salutation. (This will depend on the level of friendliness you’re going for.)
3. Play with your subject lines.
Once you’ve got your campaign strategy down, focus on the subtleties of messaging. This starts with the first thing your customers will see: the subject line. If it doesn’t pique their curiosity among the other emails in their inbox, they’ll likely delete it.
If you want customers to open your emails, you need to play around with your subject lines and figure out what catches their attention. Try out different subject lines by asking questions or teasing content. Avoid potentially off-putting words, like “donate,” which can reduce your open rate by 50% or more.
4. Name benefits, not features.
To create an attractive subject, Ryan Gould, vice president of strategy and marketing services at Elevation Marketing, advises getting personal with customers by being upfront about who you are and what you can do for them.
Even better would be to personalize these benefits with subject lines such as “X helps influencers like you get paid by doing Y,” according to Quincy Smith, head of SEO at Springboard. After applying targeted benefits marketing to his campaigns, Smith increased open rates from 8% to 17%.
5. Be concise.
Don’t complicate your emails. Say exactly what you want to say in a way that will interest readers. You don’t have to type paragraphs of content that no one will read. Think of a press release, not a research paper.
A rule of thumb is that if your emails take longer than two to three minutes to read, they’re likely to be ignored, added Mora.
One way to decrease word count is to cut out all the waffling, which customers will appreciate anyway. For example, Kyle Turk, vice president of marketing at Keynote Search, found that greater transparency in email subject lines increased open rates from 21% to 30%.
6. Include a call to action.
With all this focus on getting the customer’s attention, it’s easy to forget the initial intention of the email. Are you reminding them that they have an item in their cart? Alerting them of a sale? Promoting a new product? A clever subject line may improve your open rate, but to increase engagement, you have to increase your click-through rate or the percentage of subscribers following email links to your webpage. This is where you’ll need a call to action (CTA).
7. Try A/B testing.
So far, we’ve suggested marketers take the deductive approach, testing new strategies by observing relative improvement in open and click-through rates. There’s another way to improve, however, and that’s by pitting two strategies against each other.
With A/B testing, you can experiment with two variables, such as two subject lines, to discover which performs better, said Sean Nichols, marketing manager at SiteVisibility.
It’s easy enough to test preconceived strategies like the ones on this list. With A/B testing, however, you may find strategies that never would’ve occurred to you.
Recapping, I recommend these email marketing practices for SMBs:
- Plan each campaign by segmenting your customers into unique audiences.
- Personalize the content in a way that feels authentic.
- Craft engaging subject lines that speak to your audience.
- Keep your email content concise.
- Focus your content on the benefits your product offers your customer.
- Include a CTA for your customer.
- Use internal research methods, such as A/B testing, in your email segments to identify new strategies and measure the effectiveness of your subject lines and content.
By following these steps, you can ensure your next email marketing campaign is a resounding success that results in new customers and revenue for your business.
