Small Business Email Marketing – The True Story
The reason you aren’t staying awake at nights worrying about your small business email marketing is because, unlike other advertising methods, nobody is “selling it”.
While there are people selling “Yellow Page” ads, radio ads, newspaper ads, etc. the most likely source of repeat business is NONE of these. Instead your small business email marketing list is the most likely form of outreach advertising a small business can use to bring back customers again and again, essentially “on demand” and at the “push of a button”.
Best of all, when properly implemented and maintained, your small business email marketing strategy will conserve the results of your other forms of advertising. Thanks to your email list, people brought to your door the first time by other forms of advertising can be brought back again and again through a properly implemented small business email marketing plan.
Ok so how does a properly implemented small business email marketing strategy work?
Here’s what to do:
1. Every visitor, customer, and patron of your business should be offered an incentive to sign up for your email list. Preferably you should deliver that incentive by email after the customer confirms their interest as part of a “double opt in process”.
But whether they join the email list from your small business website or when patronizing your business locally, every customer should be offered the opportunity to join your email list and be rewarded for it so joining will be “worth their while”.
(The “safest” kind of lists are “double opt-in” lists. This means your customer confirms their interest in joining the email list by clicking a special link that has been emailed to them.)
Your goal should be to discipline yourself and every employee to offer your email incentive to every customer possible. The tendency will be that even after you have several hundred names that you will “slack off”. But if you will discipline your business to keep building it’s list, the more email marketing will work well for your small business.
2. As your list builds, you need to do something that is simple really but takes some thought on your part – and discipline. You need to email your list regularly.
When do you email them?
The idea of a small business email marketing strategy is to use the power of the Internet to drive customers to your business during your slow times.
Analyze your business. When are your “slow times” in the day, week, month, and year?
Target your special email offers to encourage customers to patronize you during your “slow times” and reward them for it!
3. Keep building your email list. Once other small businesses hear about your email marketing strategy, they are likely to emulate it. You may even help them. Let their list build your list.
How?
The WRONG way to do that is to “swap” email lists. Instead let these businesses send a solo email offering them a discount at your business. How do they receive the discount? You guessed it… they have to sign up for your email list!
You can do the same for them. That way customers of each business get a special value they might not otherwise have received and each business keeps growing its list.
4. Use your list to test your offers. You can “split test” your offer. Does the 10% discount drive traffic? Or does it take a “Buy one get one” offer to drive traffic during your slow time? You won’t know what works best until you test. But your email list will allow you to test.
5. Keep emailing. Keep learning. Keep seeing what works and what doesn’t work for you. You might be pleasantly surprised to find that a well implemented small business email strategy can literally cause customers and orders to start flowing into your business at the “touch of a button” – the “send” button!
So what does a small business email marketing strategy cost? That’s the best part! Unlike the expense of most advertising, your small business email marketing costs could be as little as 67 cents a day and will only grow as your business grows.
My only warning is to use a professional email list management company so you won’t be accused of SPAM. I’ve linked to one I represent and am confident in below along with a free email consultation if you take me up on the offer. But whatever you do, you should seriously consider either starting or improving your small business email strategy. The sad truth is that emailing your customers is a simple strategy that is easily overlooked during the rush of the business day.
With simple planning though, you can automate the process mostly and use it to boost your profits!
Interested in jump starting your small business email marketing? Order through this affiliate link and contact me for a free email consultation:
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