

Small businesses can increase their customer acquisition and retention through strategic email marketing campaigns. Acquiring emails for your marketing lists is an important step in successful email marketing, as we looked at in part one. But, email acquisition is only half the battle. Understanding how to properly utilize your email lists is another challenge of its own.
First impressions are incredibly important, especially in the business world. When a new subscriber or customer receives your first email, you can bet that they are judging the style, content, and language of that initial email interaction. Push too hard, and they may mark you as spam; use irrelevant information, and they may unsubscribe; try to be too edgy, and you could leave a bad taste in their mouth. Thus, it’s critical to spend time formulating your welcome email.
Some things to remember with your welcome email are:
As we mentioned earlier, a lot of businesses dump all contacts into one, unfiltered email list. They send the same email to the entire list of subscribers, without any distinction. This is a poor strategic choice and one that can end up costing your business a lot of valuable subscribers.
List segmentation is the process of dividing your email lists into groups based on variables like interests, purchase history, or demographics. It’s an easy way to increase opens, clicks, engagement, and customization. There are an endless amount of segmentation possibilities, and each business will have their own unique segments.
However, some basic groups to consider are:
If there is one tip that you take away from this article, creating unique, high-quality content in your emails should be it. If you can learn to think of email marketing as an extension of your website or blog, then you’ll quickly realize how valuable this medium is from a content standpoint. Businesses are fighting to position themselves as thought leaders on a variety of different platforms. Some invest heavily into Facebook, others Twitter, many others spend countless dollars creating content on their website in an effort to attract an audience away from media sites or other competitors.
However, email is a completely underutilized medium for thought leadership opportunities. Consider releasing exclusive articles in email format for the subscribers who joined for your blog, white papers, webinars, etc. It’s a less noisy medium and can help you better position your business as a thought leader.
Email Monday says that about 55% of emails are opened on mobile devices. This trend will only continue, as mobile phones become more integrated into our daily lives. As you probably expect, the younger demographics tend to have a higher likelihood to open emails on mobile devices. Thus, the younger your target audience, the more important it is to have a mobile-friendly email. Most email marketing tools, like MailChimp or Constant Contact, have mobile-ready templates that you can use for your emails.
Also note, that most mobile devices cut the subject lines after 30 characters, so it’s important that you learn how to write concise and effective headlines. Finally, optimize the “from name” that accompanies your emails. If your email is a generic blast, you’ll probably want to just use your brand name. However, if you’re sending an email to a specific segment, you may want to personalize exactly where that email is coming from.
Email marketing is a critical part of the success of small businesses. The more time and effort that you put into your email lists and subsequent email campaigns, the more likely your business is to reap the rewards.
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