Email marketing is a fantastic tool to help small businesses target their ideal niche audience. From contacting future customers, sending out newsletters, and sharing user-generated content (UGC), to facilitating email journeys, email marketing is an underutilized asset to any business owner or marketing team.

Here, we discuss the importance of email marketing for small businesses and cover some ways to make email marketing work for your business marketing needs. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the topic.

Email Marketing Has Highest Conversion Rate

Email marketing is a powerful marketing technique for any business. Email marketing boasts one of the higher return on investment (ROI) ratios of any online marketing method, with an incredible $36 earned for every $1 spent. But, of course, to reach that target ROI, you must ensure you’re properly utilizing email marketing techniques, such as email journeys, welcome messages, and more.

This method of marketing varies in effectiveness depending on your target demographic. For example, studies have shown that while Gen X and Gen Z are more likely to interact with email marketing campaigns, Millennials are so overwhelmed with emails that managing their inboxes can become a full-time job, making them less open to email marketing.

This doesn’t mean email marketing doesn’t work for a Millennial audience. It simply means you must tailor your email campaigns to reach your target customers better. By carefully crafting your email marketing campaign, you can ensure a higher clickthrough rate and drive up customer engagement and overall brand awareness in your customers. With that in mind, let’s look at key email marketing strategies to help your small business reach its target audience efficiently.

The Importance of Email Journeys

Email journeys are an important part of your email marketing campaign. An email journey leads customers to click through and can remind them to finish checking out or encourage them to check out your company’s social media. While there are several types of email journeys depending on your business focus, here are a few of the key kinds:

• Welcome Journey: A welcome journey does just what it says: it welcomes new customers to your business and links them to key pages, social media accounts, and more. Welcome journeys help connect customers to other parts of your business and give them a better idea of your brand, company, and more. A good welcome journey can include discount coupons, examples of other products, and even UGC to drive engagement.
• Abandoned Cart Journey: If you struggle with customers leaving your e-commerce store without purchasing, abandoned cart journeys can help increase sales and bring customers back to your page. These can work for abandoned carts or remind customers of products they previously searched for on your site. By bringing attention to previous searches, you keep your business fresh in the minds of your target audience.
• Post-Purchase Journey: Like a welcome message, post-purchase journeys connect customers with other socials, encouraging them to remember your business in the future. You can include purchase rewards or connect new customers with UGC from satisfied customers in the past. Post-purchase journeys are also a great time to remind customers of refillable products or advertise items that go well with their latest purchase.

Of course, there are other kinds of email journeys, but focusing on these three categories can help boost customer interactions and drive engagement with your email marketing. In addition, these messages can be automated, making connecting with potential customers easily without adding more work to your marketing team. And, of course, you can customize these email marketing journeys to fit your business, such as reaching out to new clients, providing automated newsletters for subscribers, and much more.

Prioritize Regular Newsletters

Regular newsletters keep potential customers interested in your business and can help you reach your target audience reliably. There’s more to company newsletters than simply relating the latest news. For example, you can use company newsletters to showcase new products, update customers on green incentives, or use UGC to drive engagement. Frequent newsletters keep your company in your customer’s minds, even if they don’t read them.

To maintain engagement, try offering customizable subscription plans for each new customer or client. While sending out mass-newsletter mailers is easy, focus on customers who opt into the program. Not only does this cut down on your overall email marketing cost, but you increase the chance of customers interacting with your newsletters.

You can create custom newsletters for different clients or customers depending on your company’s needs. However, suppose you’re looking for a streamlined email marketing system. Combining brief newsletters with different email journeys can be a great way to reach a wider audience and cover several topics.

Tips and Tricks to Get Sign-Ups

Now that you know the ins and outs of email marketing, it’s time to discuss the hard part: getting email addresses. Many methods exist to get customers to sign up for your mailing list. It all comes down to understanding your target audience and working to offer valuable services in exchange for an email. While there are many ways to drive up interest and craft a mailing list, some options include the following:

• Offering Discount Coupons: If you’ve ever seen a company offer free shipping or discount coupons if you sign up for their mailing list, you know how this strategy works. Even a small discount can incentivize the thrifty customer to sign up, making this a great way to collect mailing information.
• Building Custom User Profiles: Custom checkout profiles help you keep track of customer orders and allow customers to customize their settings and choose what advertising they receive. Custom user profiles work best for e-commerce-based small businesses and can be useful for collecting customer emails from the source.
• Providing Free Downloads: Even if you don’t offer e-commerce items, your company can still collect emails by leveraging free downloads. From product guides and magazines to checklists and even demo products, offering free or discounted products in exchange for an email address builds credibility for your business. In addition, it incentivizes customers to share their information, a real win-win for email marketing.

It’s normal to feel overwhelmed by all the options with email marketing. If you want to reach your target audience through email marketing but need help figuring out where to start, contact Planted Marketing today. Our team of experienced professionals can help streamline the process and work with your company to craft an email marketing campaign that works for your needs. To find out more or for general questions, contact us today.

Planted Marketing is a full-service digital marketing agency that specializes in educational marketing and community building. We are experts at building email automation, email journeys, and writing newsletters that not only get opened but lead to sales! Want more info? Send us a message at info@plantedmarketing.com. Talk soon!