Email Marketing for Small Business

Let’s cut right to the chase folks … email marketing is as essential to your business as food is essential to living. Period.

If you have a business and you are not reaching out to all your customers, potential customers and past customers every so often you are LOSING MONEY. Yes. You read that correctly … losing money.

Let’s look at how we humans function … Every one of our waking moments is filled with a deluge of information … the morning newspaper, TV or radio broadcast, the spouse, the kids, the employer, the employees, the clients … and the internet. And throughout the day our brain is furiously working to sort through it all, prioritize it and dump what it doesn’t need.

So, the scenario goes like this … someone visits your website because they did a search for shoe widgets and your site (it HAS been optimized , right?) came up in the first page or two of Google. They say “Wow! I love their shoe widgets! I’m buying one right now.” They buy your shoe widget and forget about you until the widgets arrive at their door, then they forget about you until they need another shoe widget. Who knows if they’ll ever return to your site?

What if you add new shoe widgets? or a new shoe gadget? or want to offer free shipping? Or you simply want to remind your customer about other shoe widgets you have?

If you have not been collecting the names and email addresses of all your customers and visitors via the website and/or brick and mortar store how are you going to let these people know about shoe widgets? Are you going to run another newspaper advertisement at $1,100 or so in the hopes that one percent of one percent of the folks who see the advertisement will visit your store and website?

That’s soooo 1970′s. And such a waste. You’ve just shotgunned an advertisement to a city full of people who are likely not really interested in shoe widgets.

On the other hand, if you email all the folks that have been to your store and your website, who maybe have already purchased your product and/or expressed specific interest in shoe widgets … you are reaching out to a group of people who are already open to shoe widget purchasing!

Now, instead of one percent of one percent response, you are getting 20%, 28% possibly even 36% response! And a much greater likelihood of making a sale to each one of them!

So … now that you know how important – and how EFFECTIVE an email campaign is we need to talk about some “bidness.”

Consistency

You should create an email campaign that is, first and foremost, consistent. Consistency in regards to timeliness and frequency. Determining when and how frequently to send an email to your list isn’t all that easy; but here are some rules of thumb:

1. Most sales on the web occur on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. (Why? that’s a history lesson in itself.) So, broadcasting your emails (if you are selling something online) on Sunday evenings and Monday mornings is key.

2. Consider what you have to say. Send emails every week, every two weeks, every three weeks .. even every four weeks; but if you email the same information every time, folks will unsubscribe in droves. Be certain you have SOMETHING NEW to say in each email. Free shipping. Buy one get one free. New product announcements. Holiday specials. When you think about it you can really discover a lot of opportunities. They have to be REAL opportunities for your customers to respond.

3. Be consistent in HOW your email looks and reads. Use an email system that allows you to send dual-layer emails i.e. emails that are text-based and image-based. This is necessary because some folks have their email software set to only read text and not show pictures.

4. ALWAYS provide double-opt-in. Double opt-in means that when someone adds their email to your list, they receive a message asking them to click to confirm that they actually want it.

5. ALWAYS provide recipients of your missives the ability to UNSUBSCRIBE from within the very email and/or on your website.

Those are the basics!

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