If you’re a business owner, then deciding what to put your marketing money into is always a challenge. You know it’s important to be attracting new customers and keep your existing clients coming back, but you can’t afford to invest time or budget into something that might not deliver the results you expect.
According to research, email is around 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter together in helping your business secure new customers.
Online marketing company ‘Constant Contact’ found out how small businesses felt they had benefited from email marketing.
Here is why small businesses said they use email marketing:
More enquiries, more traffic, more sales
Victor Terrazas, owner of Rejuvenate Therapeutic Massage, say:
“Email is our prime mode of communication. We rely really heavily on it because whenever I send something out, I’ll get a flood of telephone calls.”
Once you have an email database of existing and potential customers, which you can regularly email to, you can use it to generate traffic to your website (if you have one) or tactically increase enquiries to help boost sales, for example with a timely offer during your quieter periods.
Greater credibility
In order to buy from you, people need to trust you. Emails allow you to show off your knowledge, demonstrate your expertise and engage with potential customers.
Stronger relationships
Ideally you want your customers to come back time and time again. Emails can help you achieve that. Regular contact and sharing helpful information and timely offers, will help you develop a deeper relationship with your clients, and stay at the top of their minds all year round.
Better communication
Emails are a time and cost effective way of keeping your customers informed and up to date. It’s much easier to contact many customers at once by email than for example by phone. It’s also considerably cheaper than mail, radio or big-bucks TV, and way more reliable for actually reaching your customers than social media.
You can also start a conversation with your customers, rather than just talking at them, by asking them for their feedback and ideas.
Greater brand awareness
If people don’t know about you, they can’t buy from you. It’s that simple. Email enables you not only to keep in touch with your existing customers. You can encourage existing customers to share and forward your email, build up your own email database of potential customers or link up with a partner like Friday-Ad to tap into their email marketing.
Better know your customers
The beauty of emails continues behind the scenes. Various metrics showing opens, clicks, time spent on a page etc. can help you understand what your customers want and what works best for you. For example, by showcasing different products or services in one email, you can see which got the most engagement, i.e. which are currently most in demand.
You can also learn from your email campaigns over time, to ensure they deliver the best results for your business.
Instant results
Email marketing generates immediate results, unlike other forms of marketing which require time to build to see any results, like social media. Small businesses generally haven’t got the time to dedicate to lengthy, slow building campaigns. They want to see results right away, because every booking, appointment and sale makes a difference.
Work smarter, not harder
With most emails now being opened on a mobile device, you can reach your customers anytime, anywhere… at home, at work, on the go or on holiday, during the day or in the evenings. You’re no longer restricted to business hours to get in touch with your clients.
Email campaigns can also be set up and scheduled ahead of time, so that can focus on what really matters during your working day – running your business.
Perfect for promoting Services
If your business offers services instead of products, it can be hard to keep customers engaged and interested even during times of the year when they are not looking for your services. Email marketing enables you to keep in touch with those customers on a regular basis and build a relationship and trust over time, so that next time they do require the services you offer, you are their first port of call. You can also give them the occasional nudge to purchase your services (outside of their regular pattern), with seasonal offers and promotions.
Greater visibility = more business
As much as you’d like to think that all of your customers know about all of the products and services you have to offer, the truth is most won’t. And what they don’t know about, they can’t buy (see above). Having a channel for regular communication with your customers, allows you to showcase everything you have to offer – over time, not all in one email, you don’t want to scare them off! Seeing other products and services on offer from a now trusted supplier they have a relationship with, will likely prompt more customers to make additional purchases, which means more business for you.
It’s SO Easy
Not only is email marketing very efficient, saving you time and money, it is also really easy to get started AND to maintain it as a regular means of customer communication.
You can start your own small email circular from your very own inbox. For better results and a more professional look & feel, use a third party email provider (e.g. Mailchimp, Pure360) or partner with an email marketing provider, like Friday-Ad, who will do most of the leg work for you and can also offer expert advice and support at really affordable prices.
So there you have it. That’s why so many small businesses now rely on email marketing to engage with their customers and grow their business!
What are you waiting for? Join them today! Find out how you can grow your business with email marketing on Friday-Ad…
