Don’t listen to the haters! Email marketing is back and bigger than ever, especially for local businesses and eCommerce brands. In fact, research shows that the ROI for email marketing is $42 for each dollar a business spends.
It’s a great way to engage an audience with valuable content and remind your customer base that you are still open for business. Even if your audience doesn’t read your emails every time they get one, they still get a regular reminder of your news, discounts, and changing business hours.
For business owners, though, getting started with email marketing can be easier said than done. Our marketing team has some tips.
Get Organized
Your business likely already has a working (maybe current?) email list of customers, prospects, and vendors. (The sales and leadership team probably has a lot of them as well.) The challenge is to integrate all of these contacts into one database to upload them into an email marketing platform like Constant Contact, Mailchimp, or Active Campaign. Assign the task of organizing those contacts to one person, and once you have your list, “scrub” it for email addresses that are no longer active.
Using Website Forms
Website forms are one of the best and most efficient ways to capture leads for email marketing. It’s also a great channel for business owners to utilize when collecting data for future content marketing — like webinars, downloads, and discounts. Work with your marketing team and website designer to understand which type of form is best for your website.
Use inline forms by adding a sidebar to every page of your website. No matter which page visitors are on, they’ll have a chance to submit their information to your email list. Take things one step further by incentivizing the sign-up process with a free content download or discount at your brick-and-mortar location.
Exactly what they sound like, these forms pop up on the screen when website visitors take a certain action or visit a certain page. While these are a great way to pique the interest of your website traffic, they could impact how well your website performs and needs to be designed by professionals. Pop up forms can also be time-delated, which gives visitors time to check out a business website without being distracted or interrupted.
Don’t Forget To Segment
Once data has been collected, take the time and effort to separate or segment your email subscriber list. Personalized content goes a long way to providing an optimal customer experience, from the first contact to repeat purchases — transaction rates are six times higher when customers receive personalized emails.
Your marketing team can leverage social media accounts and content to grow the list. Run a giveaway contest on Instagram or Facebook, and use Messenger to automate messages and collect customer information. Online business reviews and industry forums are other great channels to consider when it comes to finding customer information.
Also ensure that the content you’re sharing is engaging enough to keep current and potential customers from unsubscribing. It won’t grow your list but it certainly helps to prevent it from shrinking. Your content should include language and calls to action that allow for easy social sharing and help spread news of your business by word of mouth.
Ask for Help
Organically growing an email marketing list is a high-value task for business owners, but it’s definitely something that takes time and expertise. Tap into the skills of a marketing team to help get you on the right track. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a huge disconnect between your quality of work and your lackluster digital presence.
You’ve worked hard to create a business that is excellent, reputable, and customer-focused. The problem is that very little of those qualities about your business is represented well on your website, social media and google listings.
You need an all in one strategy that attaches the same quality of work you do offline, on your website and accurately displays what you offer. Stop lying awake at night frustrated with your traction online and start seeing leads come in from your website — reach out to us today!
