10 Effective Email Marketing Tips Small Businesses Can Use

Despite a variety of options out there for businesses to reach out to interested parties and potential clients, email is still the most popular option. There are countless ways to make emails attract and keep customers, from sending them special deals or offering value through educational content and tips.

The way you send the information makes a difference between people engaging with your company and them adding your email address to their spam list. What companies should know in order to represent their brand in the best way possible:

1. Stay Compliant

One important thing to keep in mind when using email marketing is to stay compliant with GDPR. GDPR was created to protect consumers from getting unsolicited emails.

There are a number of steps you need to take to stay compliant. You need to make sure you're only sending emails to people with a legitimate interest in your product.

Include a way for subscribers to opt out in each email you send. Keeping to these requirements not only keeps you compliant, but it will keep users happy as well.

2. Personalise Your Emails

Email gets a bad reputation and it's more challenging to get a person's attention via email. Email open rates and click-through rates have consistently decreased over time.

However, email is still an effective way, if businesses personalise their email. As with anything, the more you put in, the more you get out. If a business is just sending out newsletters to a bunch of people on their email list it’s not going to get the results. But if a business is taking the time to, create content that's personalised and send emails that are relevant, then an email strategy is much more effective.

3. Be Concise and End Strong

As a company that does a fair amount of email marketing, I've learned that being concise and brief are the keys to success. Long pieces of text into short paragraphs and bullets help the reader scan the email and read and interpret the most important points. Keep marketing emails to 500 words or fewer and include "P.S." at the end of the email, since most people only read the start, middle and end of emails.

4. Don't Forget Visuals

Email marketing shouldn't just be words. You need to add graphics, pictures and even a video. That's what your audience wants to see. Make sure to make the visuals work for the small screen, however, nowadays a lot of people read emails from their mobile devices.

5. Include A Single Ask

Your email should be easy enough for the reader to know exactly what it is that you want them to do. An example is the email could ask them to click on a link to a specific blog post or website where they can learn more about your products or services, or it could ask the reader to schedule a call with you using a calendar link, or the ask could be to get connected to the relevant person in the organisation. The idea of your email is for the reader to perform some follow-up action.

6. Keep Testing To See What Works Best

If people want to receive updates from you, it means that they like you and consider doing business with you. That is why your email list is valuable. To get the best results from your campaigns and reach as many prospects as possible, find out what emails they prefer to receive. A/B testing is the best way to do this. Choose what you want to test such as the subject. You want to look for open rates and click-through rates.

7. Be Smart With The Subject Line

Make the subject line short and straight to the point. Shorter is better, and if the message is about an upcoming sale, put it in the subject line. If it's about something else, be specific once again. Bad subject lines are one of the main reasons why emails don't get opened.

8. Track Engagement

If you’re tracking engagement on your email marketing, you will typically be able to send the right amount of information to the people who are engaged the most. There’s nothing worse than signing up for a free sample then receiving hundreds of emails about different offers. On the flip side, signing up to learn more about something and someone reaches out to you weeks later about it. Don't email someone who hasn’t opened an email in more than three months.

9. Know The Value You're Providing Your Subscribers

A common mistakes businesses and marketers make when it comes to email is sending out content that isn’t of interest. When people signed up for your newsletter it doesn't mean that they are interested in everything you do. Lead with what problem needs solving and how it can help the customer.

10. Care About Your Connection

Before you spend hundreds of pounds on new designs understand you're reaching out to get to know someone and have them know about you. Make sure your outreach is genuine and focus on being helpful. Successful people don't try to sell to people, they interact and build a rapport. Find out the problem and try and solve it, go into it with the mindset that you're here to meet people, and focus on that.

For more information on how our managed email campaign services can help you develop and retain more business, contact us on 0191 406 633.