top email marketing tips for local businesses
Email has been yo-yoing in and out of favour as a marketing tool.
Whether due to rising costs connected to large databases or a consensus that email messages from companies equal spam, email isn’t always considered in the marketing mix.
A lot of companies are completely missing out on the merits of email marketing.
This is especially true for small business owners or local businesses.
When time and resources are limited, it’s understandable that a tactic that takes up both of these wouldn’t make it onto the priority list.
According to the Direct Marketing Association’s latest email marketing report, however, 95% of marketers believe that email remains relevant to their business. These marketers, many of which are also business owners, view email marketing as the backbone of their business revenue. The report also showed that ROI on email has steadily been growing year on year.
Despite complaints about email marketing, when a relevant email comes in, then people will respond.
so, how can you benefit from email marketing?
Small and local businesses still need to consider time and resources. But if you have a clear email strategy in place, then neither of these should stop you.
With an email strategy for the year, you’ll be able to:
- stay in control of overall costs
- stay in control of time spent on email creation
- measure the impact of your messages
- adapt to what’s working well
It’s good to get a marketing expert involved as soon as possible to either support you to put the plan together, create something that fits your business needs or to take over your email marketing for you. This can further ensure that time and costs stay within your budget.
Some agencies will overwhelm business owners with jargon or create a vision that email marketing is all smoke and mirrors.
A straightforward tactic delivers clear and straightforward results.
so, here are our top email marketing tips to clear the fog:
have a reason to message
Don’t message your customers for the sake of messaging.
Have a clear reason to contact them. They’ll appreciate you contacting them if you’ve got something they’ll benefit from, rather than you just trying to get something from them.
think timing
Timing is everything for marketing. To make the most out of timing, it’s good to have a proactive plan for the year ahead, but also be ready to jump on reactive opportunities.
Your email messages can then tie-in nicely with your marketing plan and you’ll keep control of costs and time invested in them.
make the benefit or action clear
Let’s face it, we all have short attention spans, so when you’re sending an email to your customers make sure the main reason for the message is clear in the subject line and the first paragraph.
An unclear message results in no reaction at all.
remember KISS
Brevity is key to good communication.
Don’t overcomplicate your message by adding too many call to actions or information. Keep things clear and straightforward.
never assume, always support
Many businesses assume that everyone knows their products or their services.
Assuming something is always a dangerous thing, so instead focus on providing information that will help your audience.
personalise
Segmenting your audience is important for personalisation, but segmentation doesn’t have to be an overly complicated thing.
Even a basic segmentation of your audience is worth it for a more targeted message.
neither overthink nor underthink
Putting an email strategy in place, when you’ve already got several plates spinning at once can put small or local businesses off.
Beware of overthinking your email approach. Even a few emails are more effective than no emails.
Also, don’t fall into the trap of underthinking your strategy.
If the purpose of every email is just to sell more, then you need to rethink, as without clear messages and benefits this approach will result in pure email spam.
in a nutshell
To recap local businesses can benefit from email marketing as it provides good ROI (when done correctly), can easily support the messages you’re already trying to get across and with good messaging helps to build your brand.
Our email marketing tips are a good start, but there’s more that can be done with a bit of planning from marketing professionals.
Email marketing is part of our digital marketing services and
you can take a closer look at these here.
If you’re interested in putting our email marketing tips into action,
And stay tuned for more marketing tips on our blog.