E-mail marketing is a powerful kind of direct marketing that doesn’t need to break the bank. In fact, many small businesses underestimate the power of e-mail marketing. It offers immense ROI and doesn’t take hours to set up.
According to iKhokha, e-mail marketing users have a reported ROI ratio of 30:1. This makes it cost-effective because other paid channels can quickly escalate and consume the entire budget. It is an easy way for small businesses to increase engagement, generate leads and drive sales.
Email marketing involves businesses sending e-mails to customers and prospects to promote their business, share news, and build relationships. It is used for:
- Promoting products and services
- Incentivising loyal customers
- Promoting lead generation
- Improving brand awareness
These campaigns take the form of:
- Newsletters: Campaigns are used to keep in touch with existing customers.
- Marketing offers: To drive sales to promotional offers and exclusive deals.
- Announcements: To keep existing customers informed about your latest products or services, and anything else concerning your business, such as changes to business hours or contact details.
- Event invitations: These e-mails are meant to connect with your regular customers and share details of upcoming events.
- Thought leadership: To share interesting developments in the industry.
1. Establish an E-mail List
You can build your e-mail list by driving sign-ups to your list through social media and pop-up forms on your website. Start by identifying the platforms that you already have at your disposal.
When encouraging people to sign up, you have to explain how you will provide value. After all, the content of your e-mails will encourage people to sign up. Are they exclusive deals? Are they regular tips? Include a short description in your sign-up form.
If you notice that the list is growing too slowly, you can consider using an incentive. Many businesses choose to provide new subscribers with a discount code that they can use for their next order.
Additionally, don’t neglect adhering to important privacy laws such as POPIA.
2. Take Marketing Goals into Account
As with any type of marketing, it is important to start with your goals. What do you want to achieve? Answering this question will guide you in strategising your campaign. Some goals include:
- Generating traffic to your site
- Driving sales
- Communicating effectively with your audience
- Creating a strong community/customer base
This is also the step where it is necessary to know what audience you are speaking to. It could be new customers, people who have abandoned their carts (if you are an e-commerce business), or a specific demographic (if you have a promotion that might interest only women, for instance, or is limited to a geographic area). To understand your audience effectively, you have to understand your business’s data.
If you haven’t segmented your audience yet, this might be the ideal time to launch a survey where you can obtain additional data to help you achieve this.
Next, your campaign goal will tell you what the call to action is that you will use. Is it to register, sign a petition, purchase a ticket or enter a raffle?
3. Choose the Right Platform
Using the right platform is a key part of a successful campaign. Especially if you want to keep it affordable.
Take the time to review the various platforms at your disposal. You need to look at elements such as the marketing automations, real-time analytics, mobile optimisation, and a calendar function. These elements indicate whether the cost is worth it. Instead of just looking into the number of e-mails that can be sent per month and the monthly subscription fee, look at the functions that are going to make your e-mail marketing easier.
You can also look at the free package or trial for the e-mail tools first to see if you can test it out before you spend a lot of money on a subscription that might not even work for you. If you are using e-mail marketing for the first time (ever), it is worth using a free tool and playing around with the various functionalities until you are comfortable with the tool.
4. Start Your Campaign
E-mail campaigns are not just some words and a few links. It is a targeted, personalised and strategic communication that is delivered with intent and precision. Let’s explain.
- Targeted: Your campaign must have a goal it is trying to achieve. This means speaking to specific people in your audience for a specific reason.
- Personalised: One of the reasons that e-mail marketing is still so effective is that it is personalised. Instead of shouting into the digital void, you are addressing specific individuals. This might be customers who showed interest in a specific product (such as a waiting list), or even the latest subscribers who are new to your business and mailing list.
- Strategic: The e-mail will contain strategic wording and messaging that encourages the intended recipient to take action.
- Intent: An effective e-mail marketing campaign isn’t just sending e-mails for the sake of sending them. No, they must be done with purpose.
- Precision: Close attention must be paid to all elements of the campaign. Wording, subject lines, call to actions, visuals, structure and the curated collection of content.
5. Look at the Analytics
Once you have sent your first e-mail, you need to keep a close eye on the analytics, as it will direct you to the next steps in your marketing campaign.
Platforms usually provide you with insights into the number of opens, but also the click-through rate for the links in your newsletter. Look at elements such as:
- Emails not opened
- Bounce rate (how many subscribers the email couldn’t be delivered to)
- Open rate (percentage of subscribers who opened the email)
- Click-through rate (percentage of subscribers who clicked on a link in the email)
These are the metrics that will tell you if your message is reaching your target audience and if your e-mails are turning subscribers into converted sales.
Based on the results of your analytics, you can direct your next steps, whether it is to adjust your strategy or strengthen what’s working.
