Posts Tagged email marketing

Photo by Mzelle Biscotte

As a consumer, you probably get several promotional emails each day. But as a small business owner, you may not know where to begin in executing your own email marketing campaign.

Here are 5 steps to help you get your email marketing campaign from concept to execution.

1. Plan your campaign

• Make sure you understand the difference between goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics
• Decide what you want your target audience to do
  • If you want them to visit your website, create a single page, usually called a landing page, that’s accessible only from the email. That way, you can accurately track visitors from your email campaign and focus specifically on the message of the campaign.
  • If you’re using an email campaign to support in-store marketing efforts such as a pricing promotion, be sure to include a coupon code for your POS system and brief your sales staff on how to handle these coupons.
• Brainstorm your messaging and creative
  • Write copy for the subject lines as well as the body of the message
  • Incorporate compelling imagery and product shots if the strategy calls for it
• Set measurable goals for the campaign
  • Open rate
  • Click through rate
  • Conversion rate
  • Overall campaign ROI

2. Build and clean your mailing list

• Read my 5 tips for building your mailing list
• Take time to ensure accuracy of the data in your list
• Place contacts without email addresses in a separate spreadsheet
• Remove duplicate entries

3. Setup the email campaign

• Choose a reputable email campaign sending platform
  • MailChimp (I prefer MailChimp for it’s tracking functionality, flexible pricing, and great design)
  • iContact
  • Constant Contact
• Using a service provider for your small business email marketing campaign is important for several reasons:
  • Using your personal or small business email address for large mailings will likely result in email service providers, such as Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Gmail, blacklisting your address as spam
  • These programs provide excellent tracking tools for you to measures the benchmarks you set back in step one
  • They provide list management functionality to help you manage your data

4. Track your progress

• Using the tools you setup in step 3, relentlessly track the success of your mailings

5. Test your campaigns regularly

• Email marketing provides the ability to instantly track the success or failure of your small business’ email marketing campaign
• You’ll want to test against several variables:
  • Subject line copy
  • Headaline and body copy
  • Different calls to action
  • Text vs. HTML
  • Types of creative
  • “from” address
• Use A/B testing methods
  • Split your list in half
  • Send group A the original email
  • Send group B the same version but with one variable altered
  • This way you’ll know for certain that the single variable your changed was responsible for the change

Now repeat this process for each email marketing campaign you conduct for your small business.

Email marketing has proven to be  a powerful tool for small businesses, but the effectiveness of any email campaign is directly related to the size and quality of your distribution list.  Here are 5 simple tips for growing your email subscriber list.

1. Collect business cards for a drawing. We’ve all seen this, but it works!
   • Hold weekly or bi-weekly drawings depending on the amount of cards you collect
   • Offer gift cards to your store; or if you’re operate a service business, consider offering free consultations
2. Make sure your small business’ website has an opt-in box
   • You can use your website for simple email address gathering for newsletters, or full contact forms for lead generation
   • Emphasize the box in the overall layout of your website
   • Promote opt-ins by offering email promotions, inside industry news, or exclusive how-tos
3. Gather email addresses from visitors to your booth at conventions
   • Follow-up with an event debriefing campaign with special offers for attendees
4. Require completion of a sign-up form as part of your content marketing strategy
   • Write an eBook or write a white paper to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry
   • Make sure to add a checkbox to the sign-up form for permission to send follow-up emails
5. Ask for email addresses as part of the checkout process
   • Keep existing customers separate from your general population so you can target them with customer retention campaigns

With all of these tactics, be sure to make clear that the email addresses will be used for future mailings. Sending unwanted messages not only wastes your time and resources, it harms your image in the eyes of your target audience.