Are you searching for a marketing method to get your small business consistently in front of your ideal customers, connect with them personally, and bring in high sales? Allow me to introduce you to email marketing.
Having an email is a universal experience these days. That makes it prime real estate for marketing your business.
Today, I’m sharing why email marketing is so important for your small business to invest in. Whether you have an email list or not, this post shows you why you should start one today.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is using emails to connect with and sell to your audience. With billions of email users, you can reach more people at a fraction of the cost of many other marketing tactics.
Why is Email Marketing Important for Small Businesses?
Personal Connection
Your intimate connection with your customers is one of the advantages of being a small business. Your products or services go straight from your hands to your customers' homes without shady production or middlemen.
The same thing can be said for email marketing. When you post on Instagram, it's shown to everyone in your audience, whether they're a 30-year-old mother of three or an 18-year-old fashion blogger. But with email, you can segment and personalize your marketing so both of them get a message relevent to them.
For example, if you're a small clothing boutique, you can send your mom customers an email about your most comfortable or timeless pieces. Meanwhile, your younger customers receive an email showing how to create trendy outfits using your clothes. Email lets you speak to each customer individually, giving them what they need on their buying journey.
You Own It
You might have thousands of followers on Instagram or TikTok. But if you woke up tomorrow and those platforms were gone, your entire audience. But with email, you always have your subscribers' email addresses, even if your email service provider (or ESP) closes down.
This means you don’t have to worry about learning the latest social media platform or trying to rank in Google, although both are good. You connect directly to your customers without worrying about SEO or the latest algorithm change.
You can also choose to switch ESPs without building your list from scratch. If your current platform is no longer working for you, you can select a new one and take your subscribers with you.
High Return on Investment
Return on investment, or ROI, is how much money your marketing brings in compared to what you spend. Email marketing currently sits between $36-45 to $1, meaning if you just spent a dollar on marketing, you’ll make back about $40.
Traditional marketing methods involve paying for ad space or clicks. With email, your biggest investment will probably be your ESP and maybe an email copywriter. Traditional marketing is hard to track and analyze, while email analytics make both easy.
For a small business with a moderate budget, it's well worth investing in email marketing. If you spend as little as $20 per month on it, with a bit of time and effort, you could see hundreds of dollars in sales.
Build Relationships
You already know the importance of building strong customer relationships as a small business. If you stay connected with a satisfied customer, you’re much more likely to get repeat purchases and word-of-mouth marketing. Good customer service is one way to build that relationship; email marketing is another.
This partially goes back to the personalization point. Email marketing allows you to create a unique experience for each customer based on their buying habits and demographic. You can make your subscribers feel special by offering them early access to new products or subscriber-only sales. All these things help you build strong relationships and customer loyalty.
Easy to Analyze and Adjust
Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt personally victimized by the ever-changing Instagram algorithm.
It’s hard to keep up with the constant shifting and prioritizing of different content on one platform, much less multiple. That’s one of the reasons I’d choose email marketing over social media marketing if I could only pick one to keep forever (although both have their purposes).
With email, analytics are easy to track and understand, allowing you to adjust your strategy and see results. You can also test things with email via A/B testing. Email marketing does require experimentation to succeed, but it’s much more systematic than social media marketing.
It Saves Time
As a small business owner, your time is precious, especially if you’re still in the one-person stage. You need to make it stretch as far as possible, which means you need time-effective marketing tactics that bring results.
Welcome to email marketing. You can set up many parts, such as welcome emails or shipping notifications, to go out automatically, meaning you only have to create them once. Emails are also reasonably easy to write, although they require time to master.
Many ESPs are also designed to make creating emails easy. You can drag and drop the elements you want, write the emails on their platform, and never worry about HTML or coding. It may not be the same for everyone, but I always find writing and sending an email much quicker than creating social media content.
Get in Front of Your Audience Consistently
Social media’s changing algorithms also mean your followers may not see your posts. If they aren’t interacting, the platform shows them to fewer people. Even when you pay for targeted ads, they can be blocked or ignored as people scroll.
Emails go straight to your subscriber’s inbox, where they can spend two hours a day or more. As long as you avoid landing in their spam folder, you get right in front of their eyes.
You need to be visible to get sales and build relationships. If your customers never see anything from you, they won't remember you. Email lets them see you at least a few times a month, bringing more familiarity and sales.
No matter what tactic you take or where you decide to spend your time, don’t overlook the importance of email marketing. As an email copywriter, I’m biased, but I believe it’s one of the best things you can spend time and money on as a small business.
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