Photo: McKinsey
With all the buzz and jobs created by social media marketing in the past few years, it is easy to forget about or dismiss email marketing – but that would be a big mistake. The Huffington Post recently came out with a beginner’s guide, The Essentials of Email Marketing for Small Business, which was the last article in a series of five on the basics of online marketing for small business. It’s a good introduction for companies just starting out with digital marketing. We at Easypurl would like to humbly add our two cents and explain how companies can use our software to power their campaigns.
What is email marketing?
“Email marketing is the process of emailing to a database of customers or potential customers for the purpose of soliciting business, brand awareness or building loyalty and trust. It can typically take the form of a newsletter, promotion or educational sequence. Often these emails are heavily branded and focus on obtaining clicks through to a particular landing page or website.” – Huffington Post nails it
Why use email marketing?
- It’s effective: Social media is all the rage these days and it is undoubtedly important to maintain a presence there, but email marketing is still almost 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter outreach combined, a study by McKinsey found last year.
- It yields quick results: Good or bad, you will know how your campaign is going. Easypurl‘s platform is especially powerful for analyzing results data (see related: Why Software Is Better than Data Scientists for Marketing). Small businesses are more flexible and able to get things done quicker than large, bulky companies, so they need quick feedback to keep up with their operations.
- It’s very personalizable: With Easypurl, companies can create email campaigns that lead viewers to unique landing pages. Receiving an email in their inbox is already more targeted than something like a billboard or a television ad, so marketers can take advantage of this focus and personalize their emails by name, for example. For new small businesses particularly, creating personal connections with customers is important for retention.
- It’s not a lot of work: Social media must be updated daily with different content (or at least different wording of recycled content). A television ad can take weeks to write, shoot and edit. Email, especially with Easypurl, is extremely efficient, and the digital format makes it easy and fast to change and edit. For small business, this is will save time and manpower.
Tips
“When you’re starting out, it can be difficult to build a loyal base of subscribers that have opted in to receive your emails. By implementing an inbound marketing mindset, you can entice visitors to sign up to your mailing list by offering a free download in exchange for their email address. Not only is this a great way to build your database, but it’s also a great way to start nurturing leads with valuable content.” – Huffington Post
- Think mobile: Make sure your email template is mobile-friendly. If the email clicks through to a landing page, make sure that has a mobile format too.
- Learn your audience: We hear ‘know your audience’ all the time. But how? Enter email marketing. Track what content got clicks, what didn’t, and most importantly, ask why. Think of each campaign as having a market research component and incorporate learning objectives into the strategy when building campaigns.
- Don’t be afraid to mix it up: Email marketing’s quick results monitoring means that companies can change approaches quickly for the next campaign – and should. However, it keep in mind that the company’s brand should always be recognizable.
Need help?
Easypurl helps clients launch hundreds of email campaigns every month. Whether your company has content, design or analytics questions, reach out to us.
