Some small business owners may overlook email marketing in favor of weightier measures like superb web design, direct mail or customer outreach, but they shouldn’t. All efforts are important, but email newsletters and other forms of marketing are very effective in reaching customers and building relationships with them.
Business owners who are looking to overhaul any of their efforts should seek a small business loan from alternative lenders like National Funding that can give them greater flexibility. Being thrifty is a good thing, but this is an area that shouldn’t be looked over.
After owners gain more business capital to improve their email marketing efforts, there are a few things they should do first: Namely, set a clearly defined goal and establish a schedule on which emails will be sent out. Goals can vary from generating leads or sales, directing traffic to your website, or promoting specific events or discounts. Incorporating the messages with an overall content marketing strategy will ensure that these messages are seamless and all work together to achieve such measures.
Once you set a goal for email marketing, a schedule can be determined. In particular, you need to decide how often email messages will go out to consumers and how far in advance of certain events. For instance, if your company is running a promotion that starts on a Monday, messages should be sent out well in advance before the weekend to give consumers ample notice.
Clear, concise content
Once the nitty gritty – such as goal and schedule – are set, small business owners can dive into the email messages themselves by setting a newsletter template and creating content: body, subject line, and more. Above all, content should be fresh and brand new, because consumers can easily tell if a message was written weeks ago but sat in the company queue ever since.
It is important that recipients of these emails feel as though one person is relaying the message to them – not an impersonal content-creating robot. Also, typos and grammatical errors are a surefire way to turn off potential clients, so take the time to make sure the copy is clean and concise.
Subject lines may be trickier to craft, taking weeks or even months to determine what types of messages are more likely to be opened. Some consumers jump at messages with subjects about a sale while others like a subtle call to action that leaves more to the imagination.
