As the Summer months have just ended, many businesses will have experienced a slight dip in sales. If this is the case, you might be searching for some new ways to bring in revenue for the upcoming months. You might be reaching out to old clients and trying to up-sell products, capture new leads etc. However, one thing that is not usually considered, because it’s thought to be a bit old fashioned, but which can still be very effective is email marketing.
Throughout this article we’ll provide you with a quick overview of email marketing and how it can help you bring in additional sales and ultimately more revenue for your business. We’ll also go over the main benefits of email marketing and other things that you should keep in mind.
Getting Started with Email Marketing
One of the best things about email marketing is that it is relatively low cost, there are low barriers to entry, you won’t have to do a lot of promotion if you already have a database of clients, and the results are generally quite satisfying.
In order to get started with email marketing you first need to sign up with an email marketing software provider. These are companies that will manage your whole email marketing strategy for you; all you do is import your list of email addresses (make sure you have permission – you can in fact ask for permission in the very first message) and you can easily send custom emails to everyone on your list. Pricing and payment options are quite flexible so you don’t have to worry too much about that.
The Benefits of Email Marketing
Even though the amount of online users increases all the time, there are still many businesses that aren’t properly utilizing the net to its full potential. Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your products, services, or any new solution that you are pushing to the market and to your clients.
If your current marketing strategy is going well then you might not see any reasons to migrate over to email marketing as your main source of additional business, which is completely understandable. However, take a look at the list below to see some of the main benefits of email marketing and how it can be really helpful to any business.
1. Email marketing is a great low-cost solution to reaching out to your clients for a number of reasons, whether it be promoting a product or educating them.
2. The people who are signed up to your mailing list will be highly interested in your business and what you have to say. This means that you’ll have a targeted list and thus it will be much more effective than most other forms of marketing.
3. It’s a great way to promote other aspects of your business’ online presence, you can link to your social media profiles, your website, company blog etc.
Factors to Keep in Mind
Even though email marketing might seem like it has a lot of benefits, it’s unwise to say that email marketing is easy and that you don’t have to work hard at it. One of the major things that people overlook when getting into email marketing is the simplicity of the email that is sent out. Your email doesn’t need to have all the fancy images, videos, and whatever else. Just get your message across in the best possible way, this is primarily due to loading times and to ensure that the layout of the email hasn’t gone wrong. A great subject line is vital!
In addition to this, we’re also seeing an increase in the amount of emails being read whilst on a smartphone; more and more people are using their smartphone to read their emails and you should keep this in mind with your marketing campaign. What this means is that you should never make your email too wide, nor with too many images and videos. Always test your email on a significant sample before sending it out to your mailing list, and test various versions to see what works best for you.
