Small Business Email Marketing

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Why Email Marketing for Small Business?

Maybe you are a small business owner who is wondering whether you should try email marketing or not. Or perhaps you are just looking for a new way to build stronger relationships with customers and other people who have an interest in your product or service. Whatever your reason for thinking about incorporating regular email communication into your promotion and customer retention strategy, there is a very strong case for email marketing particularly for small businesses. Here are the top 5 reasons small business email marketing should be a part of your overall marketing plan.

Email Marketing is Cost Effective

Email offers the small business owner one of the best opportunities to realize a high return on investment on their marketing spend. The costs associated with email marketing is extremely low when compared to other forms of offline advertising like print mailing, radio or television spots, and online advertising such as banner ad campaigns and pay per click ads. With email marketing you can reach a large number of people with a confirmed interest in your product quickly.

For Small Business Email Builds Relationships

By engaging your customers through email, you can build trust, establish credibility and gather feedback on your product or service. You get a chance to really stand out from your competitors. Rather than just teaching people about your product, you can convey your personality, give people a glimpse of your company culture, demonstrate your passion and expertise, or just be yourself. People do not buy from emails, websites, or corporations. They buy from people. It costs you nothing to be personable or put a face on your company and email can be a highly effective way to do that.

Easily Reach a Highly Targeted Audience

Email allows you to send personalized messages specific to a customer's interests. If a person has bought from you or signed up to receive emails from you, you know they have at least some degree of interest in your product, service, company, or industry. A list of people like that can be immensely valuable. You can separate prospects from current customers to tailor your messages to achieve different goals. For existing customers, you can further segment your list based on past purchases, geographic area, or other data you most likely already have.

Low Barrier to Entry

Email has changed the way people communicate and has become a necessity in both our professional and personal lives. Regardless of your target market, the vast majority if not all of the audience you are trying to reach are going to have email accounts. The tools needed to gather and maintain email lists, create your message, and send your email are plentiful. There are plenty of mature, popular third party tools suited to small businesses that scale well as you grow. They range in price from free for do it yourselfers with time and technical skills to very expensive, full blown enterprise level marketing suites with tons of sophisticated features.

Measure Results Quickly and Easily

Having measurable, actionable data for any marketing activity can mean the difference between a successful campaign and an expensive failure. It is much easier to test and track your email campaign results. You will also start to see results within hours, unlike tradtional forms of advertising where responses trickle in slowly over days, weeks, and months. How many sales do you typically get within 48 hours of a mailing? How many people unsubscribed? If you ask your audience to perform an action such as clicking a link, completing a survey, or replying to you how responsive are they? You can quickly collect all sorts of useful metrics to help you plan your next communication, adjust your strategy, or even change your product and pricing strategy.

If You Are Not Building a List and Marketing with Email... You Should Be

Email marketing offers you the business owner arguably the best bang for your marketing buck. Email is an effective way to introduce yourself to prospects who have requested more information, stay in touch with past customers, increase brand loyalty, collect useful feedback, and make more sales. Results come quickly, statistics are easy to measure and interpret, plus the cost is likely one you can afford. Get started on making small business email marketing part of your promotional efforts today.