When operating a small business, how do you increase brand exposure to try and compete with the bigger, better-known companies? While large corporations and established business can have multi-million dollar advertising budgets, many small business owners cannot afford to spend 1 percent of that. However, one marketing tactic that any business owner can implement is email marketing.
What is Email Marketing?
Emailing a current or potential client to solicit their business, advertise your services, make an announcement, or simply check in is all considered email marketing. Using electronic mail to increase your client base and sales has become one of the most popular ways to market your brand.
What are the Benefits of Email Marketing?
Affordability
Email marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to market your brand. Many small business owners ask clients to submit their emails to receive online newsletters or to join reward programs, and utilize them to send out mass emails without spending a cent.
Investing into a customer relationship management (CRM) program is another inexpensive way to collect, store, and manage customer information for email communication. A multitude of CRM platforms, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Insightly and Zoho, offer low-cost, monthly subscriptions that allow users to send out customizable emails to their list of contacts.
Precision
One of the most appealing factors about email marketing is that it allows you to target a specific audience. While a billboard is seen by all people in a given space, and a television ad is viewed by all individuals tuned in to the channel at a specific time, email campaigns can be sent to specific groups of people.
You can select recipients based on location, shopping patterns, or likes and dislikes. Many CRM programs even allow you to create A/B testing, where you select two different campaigns and see which one generates more sales or clicks to your website.
Effectiveness
Email marketing can be extremely effective; in fact, one source claims that email marketing can provide a 3,800 percent return on investment (ROI); companies can make $38 in sales for every $1 they spend on effective email marketing.
Making the emails personal, such as addressing the recipients by name, sending them congratulatory emails on their birthdays, or making personal recommendations based on their personal preferences makes the emails even more effective- improving click-through rates by about 14 percent and conversions by 10 ten percent, according to a source.
If you are looking to increase your customer base and grow your brand identity, and would like to achieve it with a strategy that is affordable, definitely consider email marketing; it is trackable, customizable, and effective.