Email is one of the most affordable and versatile marketing tools to connect with potential and existing customers. Especially for small and medium-sized businesses that struggle to find their place in the market. But it's an often-overlooked strategy.
That's what we're here for. We'll go through the email marketing benefits for small businesses and how the perfect email marketing tool helps you do it right. Plus, we'll present you with the practices to implement it without spending too much time, budget, or effort on it.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a targeted approach to reaching customers.
Emails help you impress your audience through relevant and personalized messages, such as offers, product releases, company updates, and industry tips.
The goal of sending emails is to drive engagement, nurture leads, and ultimately, convert them into loyal customers.
What Are the Top Email Marketing Benefits for Small-Medium Businesses?
If you're still wondering if email marketing can make a difference for your small business, we've got the answer. Here's a list of the main reasons why email marketing is not just another marketing tactic, but a game-changer for SMBs.
1. Increased ROI
Email marketing brings an astonishing average return on investment (ROI):
In other words, you get impressive results without breaking the bank. Its strong ROI is its direct nature, enabling you to reach customers in their most private space online: their inbox. Dispatching personalized emails that cater to each recipient's needs creates a better impact.
What's more, you can further increase this impact if you adopt effective tactics like list segmentation, A/B testing, and consistent sending frequency. That way, you reach and retain a large audience at minimal expense. But let's analyze the “minimal expense” part.
2. Cost-Effectiveness
For SMBs with tight budgets, cost-effectiveness is a crucial consideration. Email marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing channels since it doesn't involve costs like printing or advertising space. Beyond that, there's a great variety of tools with affordable pricing, which makes it easier for small businesses to reach out to their audience.
Cheap email marketing software offers flexible pricing plans that allow you to pay according to the features you need and the budget at your disposal. Even more importantly, their pricing scales as your needs and email list grows.
With options like email personalization and automation, pre-made email templates, and detailed reporting, you get to do more with less—which is key for small businesses that work with budget limitations.
3. Mobile Reach
In today's mobile-centric world, the ability to reach consumers on their smartphones and tablets is paramount for small businesses. Email marketing offers a distinctive advantage, as emails are mobile-friendly and easily accessible on a wide range of devices.
Most email marketing services offer built-in templates with responsive design, so your emails render great on all devices. Also, you have the option to preview and test your email design through the template builder. That way, your messages get delivered seamlessly across devices, maximizing your campaign reach.
We shouldn't forget about the rise of mobile commerce either. Mobile eCommerce sales grow exponentially and are expected to have a share of 62% of eCommerce sales:
When small online stores invest in eCommerce email marketing, they increase their chances of driving conversions directly from mobile devices, capitalizing on the convenience of mobile purchasing.
4. Customer Retention
For small businesses, customer retention is even more important than acquisition. 61% of small businesses say a repeat customer spends 67% more than a new one. Email marketing excels in customer retention by providing small businesses with a direct line of communication with their existing customer base.
Through regular email communication with informative content, personalized recommendations, and loyalty programs, you keep your brand top of mind and turn one-time buyers into lifelong customers.
As loyal advocates, they're more likely to spread positive word-of-mouth, which, in turn, boosts customer acquisition, too. Win-win, right?
5. More Revenue
The ultimate goal of any marketing effort is to drive tangible results. With email marketing, small businesses can do just that by strategically guiding recipients through the sales funnel—from awareness to loyalty. Small business email marketing includes a variety of email campaigns that lead to increased revenue and sales.
For instance, you can use your emails to re-engage dormant customers, enticing them with a small discount or free shipping. Consider dispatching loyalty emails with some type of incentive to reward returning customers or upselling and cross-selling to current buyers.
The sky is the limit, as long as you create personalized emails that prompt readers to take the desired action.
6. Data-Driven Insights
One of the inherent advantages of email marketing lies in its ability to provide actionable insights and measurable results. You don't have to wait around for days either since you can access valuable data as soon as you dispatch your emails.
By monitoring their email marketing service's analytics, small businesses track how their emails perform through key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, list growth rates, and conversions.
These crucial KPIs will tell you if you're achieving your business objectives. Also, this data-driven approach helps you identify potential bottlenecks, refine your strategy, optimize your content, and improve your email ROI.
7. Website Traffic
A well-executed email marketing strategy serves as a powerful tactic for boosting website traffic. Email is among the top channels used to promote valuable content on your site and blog and keep recipients engaged with your unique selling points:
By strategically incorporating compelling calls-to-action (CTAs) and relevant content in your emails, you entice recipients to visit your website, explore products or services, and take desired actions. This enhances the visibility of your website content, contributing both to your business ranking higher on search engine results and lead generation efforts.
8. Brand Authority
Establishing authority is essential for small businesses looking to gain a competitive edge. Email marketing provides a platform to showcase expertise and share valuable insights, thus building trust and credibility. By keeping subscribers informed about recent developments in your niche, you position yourself as an industry leader.
To get there, ensure you deliver high-quality content such as educational content, case studies, and expert opinions. You should maintain regular and meaningful communication, so your recipients get excited every time they see one of your emails.
Over time, this brand authority not only attracts new customers but also fosters a community of engaged followers who are eager to read your content.
9. Reliability and Ownership
One of the most significant advantages of email marketing is that businesses have full control over their email lists. When using social media platforms or paid ads, you have to constantly catch up with algorithm changes and platform policies. And that's a time-consuming task for small teams.
But an email list is a direct asset you own, regardless of which email provider you pick. As such, it provides small businesses with flexibility in how they engage with their audience.
Apart from your email list, you own the content you produce. Therefore, you can use it to nurture relationships and drive conversions on your terms. You can even export your contacts and move them to another platform if you desire. These factors make email marketing one of the most reliable marketing channels.
10. Timely Communication
Timing is everything in marketing, and email marketing allows small businesses to send timely messages that resonate with their audience. Whether it's announcing a flash sale or sending personalized birthday greetings, it's crucial to reach the right recipients at the right time.
As a small business owner, you can leverage your email marketing tool's automation and segmentation options to deliver every message at the perfect moment. By aligning your emails with your audience's behavioral patterns, you ensure they don't just open your emails but also act on your messages
11. Audience Insights
Effective marketing begins with a deep understanding of your audience, their needs, preferences, and pain points. Email marketing offers small businesses a treasure trove of data that helps you understand your audience and tailor your marketing efforts accordingly. By tracking key email marketing metrics, you can identify what kind of content your recipients prefer to receive.
The best part is you can make a game out of gathering audience feedback, too. All you need to do is incorporate interactive elements in your emails, such as polls or surveys, to gain invaluable insights into their desires and opinions. By doing so, you turn passive readers into active participants and foster deeper connections. You can then leverage this data to improve your segmentation and targeting.
Email marketing benefits go a long way toward business growth and customer satisfaction. But, to get the most out of your emails, there are some key email practices you should implement.
How to Do Small Business Email Marketing the Right Way
Following the best practices for small business email marketing is a key ingredient of every successful email marketing strategy. Here are the top tips to follow during email creation to boost recipient engagement:
1. Build a Healthy Email List
- List segmentation lets you divide your audience into specific groups and tailor your email content accordingly.
- Create highly targeted segments based on data like their demographics, past interactions, or geolocation to create personalized emails that speak to each segment's wants and needs.
- Use your emails to send surveys or ask for feedback to gather more information straight from your customers.
2. Mind Your Email Design
- Invest in clean and professionally designed emails that reflect your brand personality.
- Keep your design simple and minimalistic, with enough white space, bulleted lists, and headings.
- Avoid adding unnecessary elements that clutter your design and stray readers away from your email CTA.
- Speaking of your CTA, make it visible and clear, using language that prompts readers to act.
3. Optimize for Mobile
- Expand your reach to as many customers as possible by investing in mobile optimization. Otherwise, you risk losing a large percentage of your audience.
- Design with mobile users in mind to make sure you provide a memorable experience to all your readers.
- Ensure you choose an email marketing solution with responsive email templates that look good on all devices.
- Use short blocks of text, adequate font sizes, and touch-friendly CTAs to facilitate the reading experience for mobile users.
4. Conduct A/B Testing
- A/B testing is the method of comparing two email variants to check which performs better.
- Experiment with different email components like your subject lines, CTAs, and content to identify which version brings the best results.
- Test one element at a time to isolate the impact of each change. Once you analyze your test results and find the winning elements, you can incorporate them in future emails.
5. Maintain a Consistent Sending Frequency
- Establishing a regular cadence of email communication helps set expectations for your subscribers.
- Regular email communication keeps your brand top of mind and helps you reinforce brand awareness. This is a great advantage for small businesses that need to encourage ongoing engagement.
- Be careful, though. Dispatching your emails too frequently may lead to recipient fatigue. On the other hand, sending them now and then will probably cause subscribers to lose interest.
- Monitor engagement metrics and adjust your sending frequency accordingly in case you detect potential issues.
We've presented you with the best tactics to ensure your emails hit their mark. But it will do you no good if you don't invest in the right email marketing software that will take your email marketing to the next level.
What Are the Best Tools for Small Business Email Marketing?
One of the first steps in every email marketing guide is to pick the ideal email marketing platform to turn your emails into revenue. As you can tell, you'll have to research many tools. Luckily for you, we've done the research part and will now list the best email marketing software in the market:
1. weMail
If you are a WordPress user looking to conduct your Email campaign in the easiest most affordable, and the quickest way nothing can beat the weMail. This solution will help you manage your email subscribers quite efficiently.
weMail is an email marketing solution for WordPress that enables users to send newsletters, collect leads, automate emails, and display subscription forms. It integrates with an email-sending API to enhance email management and boost productivity.
It’s easy to use. Highly customizable. Affordable. And the setup is minutes away. WordPress users can integrate weMail into their site, and send strategic newsletters & email campaigns.
2. Moosend
Moosend is considered a top pick for small and medium businesses. Its modern UI and handy drag-and-drop editor help you design compelling emails from scratch. Alternatively, you can tweak one of its built-in templates, all of them with responsive and customizable design. Also, you'll find a wide range of email automation workflows called recipes, lead generation options, advanced segmentation with multiple criteria, and 24/7 email and chat support.
Best for: eCommerce, SaaS, agencies, publishers
Pricing: Moosend's paid plan starts at $9/month. The platform offers a 30-day free trial.
3. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing solution with a range of tools to grow your small business. It stands out for its automation capabilities and reporting. Also, this software offers features like event tracking, a CRM system, and a large list of integrations. ActiveCampaign does well in terms of email deliverability, too. However, it might not be the best option for entry-level marketers as its email editor isn't beginner-friendly, based on reviews.
Best for: eCommerce, creators, online course providers
Pricing: ActiveCampaign pricing starts at $39/month, while you can leverage the platform's 14-day free trial to test its capabilities.
4. GetResponse
GetResponse is an established platform that many small businesses trust due to its intuitive editor and wide selection of email templates (more than 200). With GetResponse, you can combine emails with SMS marketing capabilities, web push notifications, and webinar hosting options to organize your own webinars. Also, you can use the platform to add a live chat feature to your website.
Best for: eCommerce, publishers
Pricing: GetResponse has a free plan for businesses with email lists that don't exceed 500 contacts. You can pick one of their paid plans, starting at $17/month.
5. Brevo
Brevo has all the necessary email marketing features any small business needs. But it goes beyond email marketing, giving you the option to run multi-channel campaigns with SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook ads. Also, there's a separate SMTP service so you can send bulk emails directly from your website. If you have a large contact list, you should keep in mind that Brevo offers unlimited contacts on all plans.
Best for: Publishers, Agencies.
Pricing: With Brevo's free plan, you can send up to 300 emails daily. Its low-tier plan costs $25/month.
Boosting Customer Engagement with Small Business Email Marketing
If you are on the hunt for a game-changing strategy to connect with your customers, boost sales, and increase brand loyalty, look no further than email marketing. Not only is it a budget-friendly option, but it also comes with a ton of benefits for small businesses looking to power up their game.
Whether you're just starting or want to optimize your existing email strategy, our guide offers a roadmap to boosting recipient engagement.
Start by picking the right software and following the best practices shared to entice subscribers. Capitalizing on your email marketing is a key ingredient in business success and lasting customer relationships