Master Email Marketing: Small Business Guide

How to get started with email marketing

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site. This can have a positive effect on your bottom line. Using the right approach, you can increase sales and create lasting relationships with customers.

It could not be simpler; sending an email to your database is all required. Wrong! It's not true! These emails are usually uninteresting, and we can choose to delete, not read, unsubscribe or flag them as spam. This is where the problems start. Unsolicited emails can damage your business's reputation, and you may even be penalized or blocked.

It is about doing the right things at the right time, place, and audience to build an effective email marketing campaign.

What are the benefits of email marketing?

Small and medium-sized companies rely on email marketing for customer acquisition and retention. 81% of SMBs still use email to acquire customers.

Just in 2019, 293.6 billion emails were received and sent each day. This is a remarkable number. However, this number is expected to rise to more than 347.3 billion daily emails by 2022, despite new communication methods. Email marketing is not going away soon, this proves.

It's not surprising that email marketing is hugely popular and has many undisputed benefits. A well-thought-out email marketing strategy will make money.

You can expect a $42 average return on investment for every $1 spent on email marketing.

Email engagement is marketers' most popular metric to measure content performance. Nine out of ten marketers report that they look at email metrics like open rates, click rates, and downloads more than social media analytics and website traffic to assess the success of a piece of content.

These email marketing statistics will help you to see the potential of an email marketing campaign.

What can email marketing be used for?

Email marketing can be used for many reasons. Here are some of the most popular:

Building relationships.
Increase brand awareness
Promotion of your content.
Generate leads.
Marketing your products.
Nurturing leads

Make an email marketing strategy.

Let's not get overwhelmed by the many options available in email marketing. Instead, let us break down the steps necessary to build a strong email campaign.

Every day, customers get hundreds of emails. This means that your customers receive hundreds of emails every day. If you don't develop a strategy, your messages will get lost in the crowded inboxes or be sent to spam.

Learn how to create an email strategy that works and sends emails people to want to read. You only need a plan. These six steps can be used as an outline of your email strategy.

Define Your Audience

A relevant email is a key to an effective email. As with all marketing, it is important to understand your buyer persona and what they are looking for. Then tailor your email campaign to suit their needs.

Establish SMART Goals

Gather context before you start thinking about your campaign goals. To ensure you set realistic goals, research the industry average email stats and use SMART Objectives.

It's easy to sign up.

You need to build a list of contacts to grow your audience. You need multiple ways prospects can opt-in for your emails to build these lists (see below).

Do not be discouraged if your list only contains a handful of people. Although it can take time to build your email list, you will see organic growth in your subscribers if you work hard.

Select an email campaign type

Many email campaigns are available, and it can be hard to decide which is best for you. Do you need to send a weekly newsletter or not? What blog post or case study is the best to share with others? Do you need to send out product updates regularly?

These are questions that every marketer has to answer. However, the answers can be subjective. Start by researching the various types of email campaigns available, and then decide which one is best for you.

Select a Schedule

You should decide how often you will contact your list of members. Also, let your audience know in advance what you expect. Establishing trust with your audience and keeping them on the same schedule is important.

Analyze the results

Data is an increasingly important part of strategic decision-making in business. To help you make small adjustments that can yield greater results, it is important to consider the ROI of email campaigns.

We've covered the basics of email marketing, and now we'll go into detail about building email campaigns.

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How to define your email goals

Email marketing success is dependent on setting goals. You can direct the direction of your email marketing campaign and make it easier for you to measure success.

It is important to think about why you are sending an email. Do you want to increase your sales? Do you want to increase the number of attendees at events? Perhaps you have just launched a new product and want to share it with people.

The why is key to determining your goals. You might want to:

Use a weekly news summary to keep in touch with customers and prospects.
Promote a specific event.
Promote a product launch
Inform your prospects and customers about the discount that you offer.
Send a timely announcement.

Also, it is important to remember that an unscheduled email is more likely than not to have a negative impact and be regarded as spam. Regardless of your goals, your recipients should receive regular, relevant, and useful information. This will allow them to get used to you appearing in their inbox.

How to build an email mailing list

Email marketing is not possible without someone to send it. Don't be overwhelmed by the size of your email list. A carefully planned campaign, with the right message and sent to 50 people, can produce better results than an email sent to more than 10,000.

When creating your list, you should remember the top three things: permission, permission, and permission.

You must have the explicit permission of someone to send information to your organization (see GDPR). This permission can be obtained by signing up on your website or selling something to them. Lead magnets are another way to get their consent.

Avoid buying, renting, or copying email addresses from other websites. You can also avoid digging into your historical contact list.

You can get complaints if you send emails to purchased lists. This could lead to you being blacklisted or even thrown out of commercial email marketing systems.

Make Lead Magnets

Lead magnets offer free incentives encouraging prospects to sign up for your email list. You can give it away in exchange for your email address.

A great lead magnet is relevant, helpful, and, ultimately, beneficial to your prospects.

Here are some examples of lead magnets.

Ebook
Whitepaper
Report or Study
Checklist
Templates
Webinars or Course

Communicate regularly and keep it relevant

You can build trust by keeping in touch with people on your contact list. It must be mutually beneficial, just like any relationship that lasts. It should be of value to the recipient or provide some benefit. It must be relevant, but most importantly, it should have value. If you sell multiple products, identify the subscribers who are most interested in each one. You can personalize your messages to different groups.

A growing number of subscribers will be more open to your messages, which will help you. This will indirectly affect your reputation as a sender with your audience and your internet service providers. This means that your emails will not be filtered into junk folders or spam traps, resulting in fewer complaints.

Create Compelling Email Designs

You may already be sending regular emails. This will give you an idea of the most used devices by your contacts to view your messages. It will be no surprise that over half of all emails are now read on mobile devices. This allows you to make a decision:

Emails should be designed traditionally (or using a template) to look good on a desktop but small on a smartphone.
Your emails will look amazing on a smartphone. Use a single-column design with a large font size and keep it small on a PC.
Make your email stand out on desktop and mobile with one of these emerging responsive frameworks.

It is important to test your email no matter what route you choose.

It may look great in Outlook, but it doesn't necessarily mean it will look good on Gmail or iPhone. Send it to as many email clients as possible or use Litmus, an email testing service. This will allow you to compare how your email looks across different email clients. These services will help you avoid junk folders and check whether your email is likely to be marked spam.

Select the right email marketing software

After you've created your email templates and built your mailing list, it's time for you to think about your Email Service Provider. An ESP can be a great resource if you need any type of support or help with your email marketing.

The Simple System's Email Marketing Tool allows you to create professional-looking marketing emails. It doesn't require any IT support or designers. You can use various features to create effective email marketing campaigns that support your goals.

Our tool also allows you to quickly analyze the success of your email marketing campaigns.

This will allow you to monitor leads and potentials and the value and number of closed deals. You can then track the ROI of each marketing campaign and optimize your marketing spend.

These are some features services such as Simple Systems offer to help you choose an email service provider.

CRM platform with segmentation capabilities
Automated Campaigns
Simple GDPR Compliance
Integration of Websites
Analytics built-in
Downloadable reports

Analyze, Report, and Improve

Analyzing your email marketing campaigns will help you make better business decisions and improve your bottom line. This will allow you to make content that resonates with your target audience and justify your efforts to the rest.

Here are some great ways to determine the effectiveness of your campaign:

Deliverability.
Open rate
Clickthrough rate (CTR).
Unsubscribes.

How to set email marketing KPIs

KPIs can be affected by many factors. Finding the best tweaks for your emails will take some experimentation to see results. You can use A/B testing to determine which factors are not performing well.

These are some questions you can ask when looking at your emails.

Did your deliverability and open rate compare well to other periods?

What was your CTR compared to your open rate?
Is the length of an email a factor in CTR?
Is there a better CTA?
Did the offer work for the list segment?

Advanced Email Marketing Techniques

You now know the essential elements of an email campaign that will be effective, so it is time to look at advanced email marketing strategies.

Implement Email Segmentation

Many businesses continue to send the same content to all of their subscribers via email. This means that they send one large email list. This requires very little effort. Nearly half of the people who sign up for these email lists send messages straight to the trashcan.

For example, if your subscribers are having problems with your service, you will likely lose them. Your subscribers should be treated as people you want to get to know, not as a bunch of leads trying to fit into one box.

Segmentation is a key component of a marketing campaign. It allows you to target the right audience at the right time with the right message.

Segmentation is a personalization tactic that allows you to break down large lists into smaller subcategories tailored to your subscribers' unique preferences, interests, locations, and characteristics. Every business is unique, so how you segment your email list may differ from another.

Segmented emails are proven to generate 58% of revenue.

Personalize Your Email Marketing

It will be easier to create personalized emails once you have a better idea of who you're sending them to and their priorities.

Personalized emails have 26% higher open and 14% higher clickthrough rates than other emails.

Here are some ways to personalize your email:

Include a field for your first name in your greeting and/or subject line.
If necessary, include information specific to your region.
Send relevant content to the stage of your lead's life.
Send emails only that relate to your lead's last interaction with your brand.
Write about personal and relevant events specific to your regions, such as birthdays or holidays.
Send your emails to an individual signature, not your company.
To make an offer, the reader will appreciate the use of a call-to-action.
Add a branded signature to your email signature to give your emails an individual touch.

Email Marketing & Customer Relationship Management

Integrating your email marketing into your CRM is a good idea. This will enable your salespeople to see which emails are being read by prospects and customers and whether they have deleted them.

You can use either a CRM that integrates with an email marketing system or a CRM that includes email marketing. You will need to automate transferring contacts from your marketing system to sales systems if you have separate sales and marketing departments. However, once they have expressed interest in buying, you should pass them back to your marketing team.

Email Marketing Automation - Incorporate

After you have run your campaigns many times, you may want to automate them. You can automate your emails by creating an email to greet visitors who sign up for your website. You can add them to your mailing list to ensure they receive your messages. You can add a subscriber to your newsletter list and make them a customer.

Email marketing is an art form. Gone are the days when you could send one blast to a large number of names. These days, it's all about being targeted and relevant.

Follow GDPR Compliance

The implementation of GDPR has significantly impacted how companies work with third-party service providers. One of the biggest impacts was on email marketing. This was due to the GDPR having a significant impact on marketing departments that rely on personal data from users for a wide variety of activities.

Although some might consider these regulations unnecessary, GDPR was created to encourage businesses to develop long-lasting relationships. GDPR, in other words, is about giving your customers the freedom to choose. They can choose to receive your emails and purchase your products. That is what inbound marketing is all about.

Important information about GDPR is that it applies to EU-based businesses and to all businesses selling to EU citizens. Noncompliance can result in substantial fees that aren't worth the risk. This highlights the importance of fully reading the GDPR guidelines.

Spam Filters: How to Avoid

You've built a great email list and created some amazing emails. All this while adhering fully to GDPR. You can avoid spam filters by sending quality emails.

Not necessarily.

Email deliverability is affected by many factors. You will want to avoid spam folders because:

This can affect your delivery rates.
Likely, your contacts will not receive all of your emails.
It is impossible to measure the effectiveness of your email marketing.
Your analytics will be distorted.

You can avoid being sent spam by monitoring the right signals and ensuring that your content is high-quality. Here are some key points to keep in mind.

Whitelist your company.

Whitelisting an address means that you add them to a list of approved senders. This will let your email client know that you trust the sender and keep the emails from them at the top of your inbox.

Make sure you have a copy.

Your copy is subject to strict scrutiny by spam filters. Every detail matters: the design, fonts, attachments, embeds, images, and everything in between. Even the most unusual things can be detected by spam filters, such as using the term 'bitcoin.' The devil is in the details. Here, it is best to reduce the number of details and simplify as much as possible.

Use a reliable email service provider.

The reputation of your email service provider can affect your deliverability. Stick to well-respected companies.