Email marketing remains a highly effective marketing strategy for businesses today. Despite the increased popularity of social media marketing, email marketing still results in valuable benefits for small businesses in terms of ROI, reach, revenue growth, and many other benefits we will explore in this article.
Email Marketing Today
Email marketing today is a powerful tool for small businesses to promote products and services, establish relationships, build brand awareness and industry authority, and drive sales. Email marketing is considered direct marketing that allows businesses to connect with customers through emails and newsletter distribution using email addresses voluntarily provided by customers and followers. Through data analytics, email marketing today can be personalised and tailored to customers based on behaviours such as opening certain emails and not others, purchases, link clicks, and sharing.
Benefits of Email Marketing for Small Businesses
High ROI
Studies show email marketing produces a median ROI of 122%. That is four times higher than other digital marketing strategies. One reason for such a consistently high ROI when using email marking is the cost-effectiveness of running email campaigns. With a small investment, companies can create compelling, effective content, use an automated distribution system, and see a considerable return on investment with minimal overhead and minimal time.
Connect with Target Audience
Through subscriber data, including demographics, purchase behaviour, and other factors, businesses are empowered to create personalised, targeted messages for their customers. Tools such as segmented email lists take this concept a step further, helping companies to reach specific customer groups within their email lists.
Increase Brand Recognition & Industry Authority
Companies can leverage email marketing through tone of voice, personality, and visual marketing to build brand awareness and recognition. The ability to use a consistent template when drafting emails helps simplify branding efforts. In addition to brand awareness, email marketing campaigns help establish industry authority. When companies consistently provide valuable content to customers with a healthy mix of promotional sales and helpful informational content, customers begin to recognise brands as trusted sources of information.
Build Relationships & Trust
Regular communication, consistent valuable information, and an open communication between customers and the company help build relationships and trust with existing and potential customers. Email marketing efforts can help businesses build customer relationships through delivering quality content vs quantity. It is essential to deliver the content promised without over-sending frivolous emails.
In addition to building relationships, busineses can build trust through effective email marketing. Trust is gained through open communication and avoiding “do-not-reply” style emails. Another critical trust-building tip includes providing an easy way for customers to unsubscribe. While providing someone with an easy way to unsubscribe may seem counterintuitive, it is a simple step that builds trust and may be an important part of someone’s decision to return.
Time & Money
An email marketing strategy optimises time efficiency and marketing budgets. Email marketing typically has a low cost through affordable, scalable marketing plans. Time efficiency with email marketing is maximised with automation tools that can easily take new and old customers through sales funnels explicitly designed for customers at any step in their customer journey.
Increased Revenue
Email marketing is a practical way to increase revenue in almost every industry. Statista reports projected revenue in billion US dollars as 10.89 for 2023. Timely information and quality content increase the likelihood of customers purchasing directly due to email marketing.
Increased Website Traffic
Including links in each email can drive traffic to a company’s website, increasing website traffic. Increased website traffic is crucial for small businesses because increased traffic leads to higher conversion rates and can increase rankings in search engine results.
Email marking in the Business to Government (BtG) Sector
Email marketing today is an essential tool for small businesses marketing in the business-to-government sector. Public sector organisations are adopting digital communication methods making email marketing a effective B2G markting strategy. Emails are a non-invasive way to engage and establish relationship with government employees responsible for procurement. Businesses can send personalised messages designed to provide valuable information, build relationships and increase brand awareness by targeting employees responsible for making purchasing decisions through segmented email lists. Additionally, email marketing in the big sector allows businesses to track and analyse email campaigns, identifying areas for improvement and adjusting marketing strategies for greater success.
Email Marketing Best Practices
Drafting an email may seem like a simple task however, email marketing, especially business-to-business B2B or business-to-government B2G is a skill requiring some best practices in order to be effective. For example, early engagement meaning quickly capturing the recipient’s attention is crucial in an email marketing campaign. Email recipients spend a few seconds skimming an email before deciding to engage. The best practice for a B2G marketing strategy is to use a clear, concise, compelling subject line is essential for increasing the chances of engagement.
Email marketing best practices include:
- Create a compelling subject line.
- Draft a short, straightforward email using bullet points and visual content.
- Personalisation is expected from buyers today.
- Avoid the hard-sell tactics of the past, replacing them with valuable content at no cost.
- Use a call-to-action encouraging customers to try a free trial or demo.
An added note about personalisation. Personalising an email goes beyond using a first name in a subject line. The best way to keep prospective customers engaged is sending informative, quality content full of useful information targeted to the recipient.
Cadence Marketing
Cadence Marketing offers specialised services for businesses to government email marketing solutions. Through our Igenium timeline to success, we offer email packages that provide you with the necessary tools to harness market insights, laying a foundation for a targeted B2G strategy. Working with the Cadence Marketing team, you will have a dedicated campaign manager and public sector content specialist who will learn about you and the business you want to secure in the public sector to help you create a strong B2G sales strategy. We are ready to discuss taking your B2G email marketing campaigns to the next level. Contact Cadence Marketing today.
