Life as a small business owner may sometimes seem all-consuming, especially when you find yourself short on time and working to strict budgets. Marketing your small business may not be at the top of your priority list, though it’s important not to discount just how important it can be to continually engage new and existing customers. Fortunately, there is a time- and cost-efficient way you can help to keep marketing efforts alive. Enter: email marketing. With over 2.6 billion email users worldwide, and 88 per cent of smartphone users actively checking their emails at least once a day, email marketing continues to deliver the largest ROI of all marketing channels.
Get started the right way
Online email marketing tools help make it simple to get started. They provide a template for you to add in your information and imagery, and help manage your email distribution list, making it easier to put a visually pleasing email together before you hit ‘send’.
Win their attention with a snappy subject line
The subject line of an email can often make or break whether a customer opens your email. Try to keep the line short, snappy and enticing. Steer clear of excessive use of exclamation marks or capital letters, and try to avoid impersonal use of “clickbait” phrases such as “Free”, “Win” and “Call now”. Instead, capture your audience with a casual tone. Consider even a short joke or use of wordplay, to provide a little slice of enjoyment to people’s busy days. Always think, “What would I want to see in my inbox?”.
Keep it personal
Personalising emails to your customer can be crucial to help connect with them, and encourage them to read on. To help show that you know them, consider recognising their birthday, acknowledging the amount of time they’ve been a valued customer, and consider who they are as a person. You’ll be more likely to keep customers engaged in your business when you send them news they personally want to hear.
Be sure your emails look good on every device
Mobile phone use is at an all time high, so ensuring emails are optimised for both desktop and mobile devices is becoming more important. After all, if a customer can’t read the full email or the formatting is incorrect, it’s likely the email will go straight to Trash. Providers like GoDaddy offers online tools to help you create websites that look great on mobile devices and offer integrated email marketing tools, making it easier for you to connect with your customers.
Encourage email opt-ins
Consumers may be hesitant to sign up to email newsletters for concern of getting a cluttered inbox. Customers want relevant and rewarding mail so offering a sign-up incentive like a discount code or free product may just be the ticket to organically growing your email database. Organic growth is often more desirable than purchasing a pre-existing database, as people who sign-up are more likely to be invested in the content you’re sending.
The effective use of email marketing could amplify the growth of your small business. With some careful consideration about who you’re emailing, and what you’re sending, can help you reap the rewards of an engaged email distribution list.
Tara Commerford, Vice President and Managing Director Australia & New Zealand, GoDaddy
