Best Email Marketing Practices for Businesses
The top business owners in the San Francisco Bay Area know how important it is to stay at the forefront of their customers’ minds, so that when a need arises, they’ll be chosen to meet it. One of the most important tools in a good digital marketing toolkit is email. Often considered outdated, or some kind of second-rate contact method, it has the highest average ROI of any marketing initiative, and it’s a great way to help forge a personal connection with your consumer base, keep in touch with clients, and endear your audience to your brand.
These stats from outboundengine.com will give you an idea of just how impactful email marketing can be:
● Marketers consistently ranked email as the single most effective tactic for awareness, acquisition, conversion, and retention.
● 70 percent of people say they always open emails from the companies they love.
● Email marketing yields an average 4,300 percent return on investment for businesses in the United States.
Done properly, email marketing is a potent marketing tool, providing real value for your clients.
Getting Started with Email Marketing
Before you’ll be able to leverage email marketing as part of your strategy, it’s important to be sure you’re observing certain protocols to get the best results. Below, you’ll find four steps you can take right now to get the most out of email marketing.
Lead Capture: A compelling lead capture strategy is the first step toward strong email marketing. Without a good lead capture option on your site, you’ll have no one to email! This goes way beyond a contact page. Everyone has one of those. We’re talking about a special offer, like an ebook filled with
insider tips, a free business consultation, or a discount on purchase. It’s something to incentivise your visitors to turn themselves into leads.
Contact Management: Now that you’ve got a wealth of leads, you’ll need to develop some kind of system for keeping track of your contacts. There are plenty of good options for CRM (Customer Relationship Software), or you might use an ESP (email service provider) like MailChimp.
Create a Great Newsletter: For your customer base, your clients, or your audience, create a really excellent weekly or monthly newsletter to share updates about your business, good reviews or milestones, blog posts, or other traffic drivers to encourage your users to return to your site. This is a great way to keep your brand at the top of their minds, and to provide a valuable resource in the process.
Drip Email Campaigns: For new visitors, a drip email campaign is definitely the way to go. Basically, a drip campaign is a series of auto-responses with calls to action that are sent to first-time subscribers. They give you the chance to establish yourself as an expert, provide information, and endear your brand to your new users. Remember that the San Francisco Bay Area is a highly competitive business
market. Email marketing will help your brand or business to stand out from the crowd. Be sure you’re creative, innovative, polite, and respectful, and always be sure to touch on those elements that make your brand unique.
Things to Include in your Emails:
● Your logo, usually for the header image
● A tagline to express your mission statement or values
● The recipient’s name (generally this can autopopulate with merge tags)
● Social media and sharing buttons (commonly placed in the footer)
● Links to your website and blog page (commonly placed in the footer, or, for blogs, as embedded hyperlinks with clear anchor text)
● Your signature, typically placed right before the footer
● Promo materials shortly after the intro
In your emails, be sure you’re including calls to action to bring your users back to your blog content, promotional offers, special events, and more. Don’t be shy about asking for referrals, either. If you’re producing good content, or a useful service, your customers and readers will be glad to share your stuff
with their networks.