So, about 91% of consumers regularly check their emails.
Not surprising, we say.
And, what does that tell you if you have recently set up a business?
It means that emails can be a great marketing strategy if done right.
The most significant benefit of email marketing for small businesses is to help you reach your business goals on a budget.
Keep in mind that not every email pertains to sales or offers. As a marketer, you must tailor your content to appeal to your audience.
In this article, we’ll discuss email marketing, list out some email marketing services for small businesses, and even offer some email marketing tips.
Let’s start.
Why do Small Businesses Need Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a strategy that integrates customized emails as a channel to promote products or services. If done correctly, this powerful content strategy can aid brand loyalty and even help you increase your sales.
Not only is email cost-effective, but it is also a great way to stay connected to your customers.
Here are its most tangible benefits:
- Great for doing surveys or collecting feedback
- Helps to strengthen customer relationship
- Aids in generating leads (recent statistics have shown that 89% of marketing professionals rely on emails to generate leads)
- Offers an impressive ROI
- Allows you to segment your audience to provide personalized content
- Boosts traffic and sales
And so much more! You got the gist, right?
With so many benefits from a marketing channel, you surely want to incorporate it into your marketing and brand building strategy. So, where do you start?
First of all, check out these email marketing tips for small businesses that can help you ace the email game!
10 Email Marketing Tips for Small Business
We’ve outlined some handy email marketing tips that can get you ahead in the marketing game:
1. Keep Your Emails Short and Simple
Don’t complicate your emails or newsletters by adding too much information. This could overwhelm your readers or dilute your CTA. Keep in mind that most readers have short attention spans.
Your subject line must address what your email is all about. Add relevant images to your emails and a table of content whenever possible.
2. Use Customer Segmentation
Your customers are unique, which means that not every email caters to every customer. Create a clean email list for every segment, build cohorts, and plan your content accordingly. Incorporate the personalization tools to address your customers and provide them with what they need.
3. Prioritize on Quality of the Emails Over Quantity
No one likes to receive too many emails, especially if they contain the same information. A great email copy would send the message across in one go. Avoid using all caps or adding too many emojis. Think about what you’d like as a reader and start from there.
4. Send Mobile-friendly Emails
Test if your emails work well on mobile devices. If your email content is not readable on smartphones, you may miss out on potential customers. Some services offer mobile-friendly templates as well.
5. Personalize Your Messages
The key to making the best use of email marketing is personalization. Your messages should be relevant to your customers. Collect user data and customize your email copy to target your audience.
6. Make use of Automated Emails
Automated emails can make your work very easy. Things like welcome emails, password updates, or purchase confirmation emails can be automated with the help of email marketing CRM.
7. Set Clear Expectations
On the sign-up forms, you can always specify how often you would send out emails. Your audience would appreciate this transparency. You can also give your audience options to subscribe to different newsletters.
8. Encourage Sign-ups
Give your audience a chance to sign-up for your emails or newsletters. Place embedded forms or pop-ups on your website so that the readers can easily access them. Or even better, use magic links for easy access and increased security.
Your emails can be a great way to invite your audience to your brand’s social profiles. Allow your audience to connect with you so they can be updated with more content through your social media.
10. Track and See What Works
This is the most essential tip to ensure success in email marketing. Email marketing can help you in saving time and money.
But it can all go to waste if your marketing strategy doesn’t give you the expected returns. Be open to experimenting with your plan and track the metrics consistently.
For added convenience, consider using a free QR code generator to enhance your email marketing campaigns.
So, now that you know how to send emails to your customers, the next thing on your radar should be an email marketing service to make your work easier.
Don’t know what it is? No worries. Keep on reading.
What is an Email Marketing Service?
Email marketing services help businesses by creating optimal emails, monitor email campaigns, check analytics, and even provide contact relationship management or CRM.
Of course, different brands offer different tools and packages. But at the very least, these services will get the right email or newsletter to the right audience.
Here we have listed out top email marketing services that you can opt for.
Top 8 Email Marketing Services for Small Business
1. MailerLite
One of the most affordable services on our list, MailerLite, has free and paid plans that include A/B Testing. This test allows you to compare two marketing plans and confirm which one is more effective.
MailerLite not only gives you tools to design your email, but you can also get audience insight through forms and pop-ups.
Key features:
- Access to A/B Testing
- Allows personalization of your campaigns through email automation and segmentation
- Auto-resend email option
- Surveys and reports for your campaign
- Subscription and sign-up forms
- Email and photo editor
- Templates for newsletter
2. SendInBlue
SendInBlue is a great intuitive service that sends out transaction-based emails. These are automated emails that businesses send out to complement a transaction or service requested by the recipient. They offer different price plans based on email volume and access to advanced features.
Key features:
- A library filled with stylish email templates
- Allows you to send SMS to customers
- Incorporate Facebook Ads
- Check your email performance
- API Integration
- Add Plug-ins like WordPress and Ninja Forms
- Access real-time statistics
3. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is definitely the best email marketing service for small businesses. They allow you to purchase email credits instead of investing in a monthly charge.
The free plan allows you to access their domain and website builder. Their creative assistant tool helps with creating designs that align with your brand.
Key features:
- A mobile application to manage your account
- Advanced Segmentation and Targeting tools
- Integrating social media calendar
- Sign-up forms and printed postcards
- Create Facebook and Instagram Ads
- Design with Mailchimp’s Creative Assistant
- The paid plans get priority support
4. Netcore Cloud
Netcore Cloud is one of the top Email marketing service providers handling millions of emails on a daily basis. It also provides AMP to give you a website/app-like experience within your email.
This Martech product company helps B2C/B2B brands create amazing digital experiences by providing a range of products that help in acquisition, engagement, and retention.
Key features:
- Automate workflows with an intuitive builder
- Access real-time statistics for quick analysis.
- Auto-resend email option.
- Advanced Segmentation and Targeting tools.
- Responsive and HTML-friendly templates.
- Actionable insights for better decisions.
- Simple integration on any platform.
5. GetResponse
This is a marketing service that allows you to do much more than email marketing. Along with the usual paid plans, GetResponse currently offers a 30-day free trial period.
They offer a lot of advanced features like a sales funnel, smart automation, and webinar creation. If you’re looking for a robust alternative to GetResponse, there are other platforms available that provide similar functionalities and options.
Key features:
- Create automated emails and blog digest
- Email creator with a quick drag-and-drop
- Free templates and stock photos
- Perfect Timing Tool to deliver timely messages
- Access an AI-driven website builder
- A sleek webinar builder
- Track campaign results through easy-to-read graphs
6. Snov.io
Snov.io is a web-based platform that offers a range of tools for email marketing and lead generation. Snov.io offers a forever free plan according to which you can send emails to up to 100 unique recipients.
If you need more, you can choose among five Snov.io. paid plans, the basic plan starting from $39/month. Recently, the service has added a new feature, Email Warmup, to help you prepare your account for sending targeted emails and keeping your email deliverability high.
Key features:
- Create automated emails and blog digest
- Email creator with a quick drag-and-drop
- Free templates and stock photos
- Perfect Timing Tool to deliver timely messages
- Access an AI-driven website builder
- A sleek webinar builder
- Track campaign results through easy-to-read graphs
7. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign stands out with its powerful automation tools. By incorporating advanced machine learning on their platform, this service helps you funnel your sales.
With multi-user editing, editing revision, and geotracking, ActiveCampaign has become a popular choice for small businesses.
Key features:
- Multi-purpose email and campaign templates
- Efficient warm-up strategies to cover individual needs
- AI-powered same-thread conversations for best warm-up results
- Best coverage in the email verifier game
- Extremely precise verification
- Zero downtime policy (thanks to ping monitoring) – Easy to use
- Provides contact data with up to 95% accuracy
- More than 50 filters for targeted searches
- Real-time email verification
8. Moosend
Moosend is a dynamic marketing platform with hyper-personalization tools that fine-tune your campaign. You can access real-time metrics and incorporate CRM and CMS tools. They offer free, paid, and custom plans and allow you to pay with email credits.
Key features:
- Advanced Segmentation and Personalization
- Customize subscription forms
- Simple integration on any platform
- A/B testing and behavior analytics
- Protection from spambots
- Pixel tracking and free SSL
- Access to video tutorials and live support
We hope that our list helps you determine which service would align with your business needs.
Are You Ready to Invest in Email Marketing?
Besides checking your budget and the marketing service’s cost, certain features could help you figure out which email marketing service would fit your business requirements.
Opt for services that provide you with detailed tracking reports along with email customization, automation, and CRM tools.
Be it free or paid plans, a template library is always helpful. And if the service provides plug-in integration, that’s a plus too.
Go one step further and incorporate a social media tool in your marketing arsenal. Try SocialPilot for free and see how we can help you excel in your marketing efforts.
Frequently Asked Questions
🌟 How will email marketing help my business?
Email marketing is a reliable marketing method. For small businesses, emails can be a great way to reach and build an audience within a budget. Emails have proven to provide great ROI as well.
Businesses can improve their relationship with the customers and also effectively communicate with them. This will lead you to create better brand value. Moreover, email marketing metrics are easy to track and monitor.
🌟 What type of features should I look for in an email marketing service?
Look for analytics reports, marketing automation, and CRM. You should also have the option to send automated responses when required. The service should also give you access to customize your email templates through a visual editor.
It’s a plus if they already have some pre-designed templates to work with. Most importantly, the service should get your emails straight to people’s inboxes, not spam.
🌟 How can I track my email marketing campaign?
Most email marketing services would provide you detailed tracking reports. However, it is best to keep yourself updated about the key metrics. Open rates will show you what percentage of people have actually opened your emails.
Click-through rate would give information about the percentage of readers who clicked on a link in your email. Another important one is the Conversion rate which shows how many readers completed a task based on your CTA.
🌟 How frequently should I send emails?
You can decide that based on your marketing strategy. The email frequency can also be based on the type of content that you send out. Most marketers stick to at least 2-3 emails every month.
Consistency is vital, but don't compromise on the quality of the email content. Of course, if you’re running any promotional offers or contests, the email frequency might increase.
🌟 Should I send email newsletters?
Newsletters are great for building your email list. Once your audience opts in to receive newsletters, you can keep them informed through engaging content. You can also drive attention to already published content through your newsletter.
Newsletters are also long enough for you to add a variety of information, including promo offers, announcements, or surveys.
