When starting a business, there are many challenges – not the least of which is gaining customers.
In a recent article 8 Top Entrepreneurship Trends (2023-2025) (explodingtopics.com), the #2 Trend is the comeback of Email Marketing. While it has been a continuous part of the sales cycle and customer engagement, it is once again returning to the forefront vs. the reliance on social media outlets and paid ads. Some of the reasons are:
- The List is YOURS – you own your subscribers and it’s your relationship to build. This is not true of the social media platforms.
- SEO and the rules consistently change – While employing SEO on your website and being cognizant of key words is still very important, the ability to keep up with the changes and the crowd of paid results is typically too costly for a start up business.
- Email has measurable and impressive ROIs (Return of Investment) – In a recent report by the Data and Marketing Association, the results from email marketing can be as high as 42X the investment.
- Emails GET read – in the sales process of KNOW – LIKE – TRUST – TRY – BUY you can speak directly to the buyer’s stage and frame of mind which provides the opportunity to teach, show value and build trust.
- It doesn’t need to always be selling – staying in contact and front of mind with your prospects and customers is critical to gaining new customers and ongoing customer loyalty. Utilizing a Newsletter can be an important way just to share advice, updates of the business, customer successes or testimonials which can move your to the REPEAT and REFER stages of the customer sales cycle.
So, how do you run a successful email marketing campaign? According to an article by Brevo.com:
- Decide on your goals. Have a clear business goal for each email marketing campaign. Then, in the emails Include a call to action (CTA) that aligns with your goal.
- Know your target audience. Decide which subscribers to target. Make sure you understand their needs.
- Send relevant content. Share content your target audience wants to see. To send impactful campaigns, try segmenting your email lists (by demographics, preferences).
- Use personalization. Grab attention using personalized emails. Email marketing tools let you personalize subject lines and email content.
- Run A/B testing. Test different email subject lines and content to see what works best with your audience.
- Track metrics. Keep track of key email metrics (conversion rate, open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate). This will also help you optimize future email marketing campaigns.
As you start and build your new business, think of how to incorporate Email Marketing in your customer acquisition strategy as well as your ongoing customer relationship building. There are many tools and resources in the market place and remember we are here to help you navigate.
