Stop Sending Boring Emails and Engage with Your Customers
Email marketing can be an effective way to boost brand awareness and drive leads. That is if it’s done right. Many businesses go into email marketing blindly thinking sending something is better than sending nothing at all – and that’s just not true.
Everything you send out, from emails to social media posts, reflects your brand. If you’re messaging isn’t consistent and engaging, your audience will lose interest quickly.
If you’re a small business looking to reach your audience and increase sales, there’s much to consider before hitting send.
What to Consider with Email Marketing
Budget
Budget is always a consideration for any business, but when you’re a small or medium size business looking to increase sales, you may not have a ton of money to allocate to email marketing. If you’re new to email marketing and want to get your toes wet, consider using a free or cheaper email marketing option to get started. As your sales increase, you can increase your budget and your email services.
Goals
Before sending out your emails, be clear on what you’re trying to achieve. Every email should have an end goal. Mapping this out will allow you to track your email efforts and make adjustments as needed.
Plan & Strategy
Having an email marketing plan is essential. You need to map out the types of emails you’re going to send out, when you’re going to send them out and why. You’ll also need to determine how you’re going to track the effectiveness of your emails, such as click-throughs, open rates, and unsubscribes. Understanding your metrics will allow you to monitor your success and build on what’s working and change what is not.
Branding & Design
Brand consistency is key. Determining how your emails are designed from colors to messaging is crucial. Your logo, color scheme, and text should all be in line with your style guide and branding so as not to confuse your audience.
Affordable Email Marketing Tools
While you’re building out your email marketing strategy, you’ll need to determine what emailing service you’ll want to use. There are many services available, but it’s important to understand what you’re getting before you sign up to make sure you’re getting what you need, and that it’s worth the investment.
If a free trial is available, take advantage. Sign up and take a look. Send out some test emails internally and see if it’s worth the investment. Make sure it’s easy to create emails and offers a reporting system that’s easy to understand.
Here are some popular email marketing service providers which may interest you.
MailChimp
MailChimp allows you to create a free account for your business, which is great for startups and email marketing newbies. Your free subscription allows for up to 2,000 subscribers, 12,000 emails per month, reporting, email templates, and lists.
However, if you are considering automation, you’ll have to increase your package which ranges from $10 per month to $199 per month.
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor offers “pay-as-you-go” campaign pricing and packages ranging from $9 per month to $149 per month. The “pay-as-you-go” option allows you to pay only when you’re ready to send out emails and is free to create an account.
Marketing automation features are available for monthly packages should you want to take advantage of lead nurturing.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact offers a free 60-day trial which allows you to access all of their email marketing tools along with support. After that, you will need to choose from 2 packages which range from $20 per month to $45 per month to start.
Email automation is only offered in their ‘Email Plus’ package, but they do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee and no contracts so you can cancel at any time.
Emma
Emma offers a free risk-free trial to start, but from there you’ll need to choose from 3 packages ranging from $89 per month to $779 per month.
Their Pro package only offers 1 automated workflow, but the other packages offer unlimited automation.
What’s Next?
Once you’ve chosen the email service that works for you and gotten the hang of email marketing, you may find that you really want to start working on lead nurturing. Effective nurturing can’t be done with email alone. You’ll need to start incorporating marketing automation into your strategy and workflow.</p
