Successful e-mail marketing for small businesses

Email marketing is increasing in its popularity for good reason! It’s one of the most cost effective and immediate forms of marketing and (assuming you use the right e-mail software – there are lots of cheap and free options out there) it allows you to immediately see how your campaigns perform.

The popularity of e-mail does have a downside however – lots of businesses are doing it, including your competitors. So, using this channel well and making sure your messages are targeted with relevant content is crucial. Following these key steps will help make sure your e-mails hit the mark!

Have a clear objective - Be super clear about what you want your customers to do when they receive your e-mail, have a clear call to action outline the reason why they should read your e-mail early on with a clearly written introduction. Be single minded in your message so that you don’t confuse your audience.

Keep the design clean and easy to read – Don’t make your customers work too hard to understand what you’re trying to tell them and also make sure that the design and copy are consistent with your brand.

Tailor the content to your audience - (read about why this is important in the segmentation article). Consider who your audience is and what their interests are and try to address any questions they might have. Emails aren’t just for selling; sharing interesting content will grab your customers’ attention and make them think that you’ve tailored the content to them; it could just be a follow up e-mail after a sale to say thank you or just a piece of content that you think they’d find interesting (related to your business of course!).

Think carefully about subject lines – Subject lines are one of the key elements that will determine whether your e-mail is opened (along with timing and the brand). Keep them short, long headlines will mean your customers have to work too hard to decide whether your e-mail is worth opening.

Timing is key – Testing will help you to understand the best times to send your e-mails. You should also look at the calendar to understand whether there are any key events that work nicely with your message.

Make sure the customer journey is seamless – once people click away from your e-mail, you need to make sure that they don’t have to work too hard to find the content you featured in your e-mail. The landing page should be clear and allow the customer to complete their journey in as few clicks as possible.

Test and learn – Emails should be optimised as much as possible, measure the performance of your campaigns and look for ways to improve your open, click through and conversion rates. Does your template work as hard as it could? Have you used images that clearly communicate your message? Is the content targeted? Would sending the e-mail at another time of day? There’s only one way to find out….Test…test and test again!

Need help designing your e-mails or creating an e-mail strategy?

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