An email marketing campaign is an essential component for any small business. Whether you’re a mom and pop grocery store or an internet marketing firm, email is a powerful way to reach a wide segment of the population and provide them with relevant content. If you’re just starting out, however, you may find the process daunting. After all, the ability to send unlimited emails is a relatively new development and can be a little foreign to some business owners. Here are a few tips to help get your feet off the ground:
1. Help People Opt In – Email is powerful in that your audience has directly given you permission to send them content. Make this easy by making your email sign-up a prominent part of your web page.
2. Send Educational Content – Don’t send spam, but don’t send too many direct sales pitches either. Useful content, like graphics, articles, or blog posts, can help bring interested people to your website without them feeling “pitched.” Then make it easy for these people to find your merchandise or services.
3. Keep It Simple – It can be tempting to use your bulk email application to send complex emails with images, videos, and fancy text and fonts. Resist this temptation, and instead send simple text-based emails with some minimal images. Not only will this help you avoid the spam filter, but your emails will be easier to read and digest by your audience.
4. Segment Your Audience – Don’t send the same emails to all of your customers. Split your mailing list into groups and send different content to each. Although this may seem time-consuming at first, most autoresponders are able to do this for you automatically. Make sure to test different types of emails for each segment of your group.
5. Integrate with Social – If you use social media (and you should), you can integrate your email campaigns with your social accounts to promote content across both. Provide links to your social accounts in each email to provide a greater variety of marketing content to your email audience.