As a small business owner, you have to wear many hats. A responsibility you may not have realized when starting out was that you would have to market your business consistently.
One of the best ways to stay in touch with customers and keep them coming back is email marketing. Every small business should create a fool-proof email marketing strategy to push them ahead. So if you’re trying to bring your business to the next level, here are five benefits of email marketing for small businesses.
1. Direct Relationships
Email marketing is one of the only forms of marketing that customers can choose to opt-in themselves. Knowing that your customers are already willing to keep up with your business is a perk of email marketing.
Email marketing can also help you demonstrate how you value your customers. Some emails don’t have to drive sales or prompt customers to act. They can be reminders that your business has events they can attend or that you simply appreciate the customers that stick with you.
2. Reaching Different Audience Segments
Sometimes running a marketing campaign feels like throwing darts in the dark. You’re trying to reach a wide audience that will do something impactful. But you might not always hit the mark. With email marketing, you are building a strong database of different people over time. You can easily begin to segment your email list to address the exact type of people you are looking to target for your business.
You can also customize your email marketing experience for other segments as your business continues growing. Email marketing is more about personalization and customer experience, so being able to reach your different audience segments will benefit your business overall.
3. ROI
When it comes to the return on investment for marketing, email marketing has some of the highest ROI results. Email marketing currently has a return of investment of $36 for every $1 spent. This makes it one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing that you can implement for your business. You can also think of it this way. If you email your customers about a great new sale, they are likely to buy something from your store. And the item they’re buying will almost always be more than $1.
4. Increased Sales
With fewer people visiting brick-and-mortar shops, you can rely on your email campaigns to help increase sales. When a customer gets a timely offer via email, they may be more inclined to grab it than if they walked by your store with a sale sign. There is a sense of urgency that comes with email marketing that can make customers more inclined to make quick purchases from your business.
Email marketing also allows you to re-engage with customers and sell more products. If someone walked into your store, bought something, and left, you don’t know if they’ll ever come back to make another purchase. But with email marketing, you know exactly what customers have bought and can send them a nice email to remind them of new products you have that might be of interest to them. Sticking with personalization and creating emails that are targeted at certain clients can help you continually increase your sales.
5. Measurable Results
One of the best benefits of email marketing is obtaining easily measurable results. As a small business, it can be impossible to find the time to digest the results of your campaigns sometimes. If this is the case, you can look into the details of working with content agencies. Their expertise is in understanding and analyzing the results of digital campaigns and efforts.
If you do have the time though, measuring the results of an email marketing campaign is relatively easy to do. Once you see how your emails performed, you can go back and tweak them to see what works best for your targeted customers. Maybe a holiday campaign didn’t do as well as a discount code. From here you have actionable items you can follow to improve your campaigns and grow your relationships with your customers.
Conclusion
Email marketing is an affordable and effective way to stay in touch with your client base. Whether you’re sending discount offers or just checking in with a personalized touch, it’s a tool that every small business should implement to stay ahead.
