The fact that we are progressively migrating from traditional to digital communication is nothing new. What is most surprising is the rapid acceleration of this process, to which the pandemic situation in which we find ourselves today has given a considerable boost.
A Forrester analysis of consumer communication found that the pandemic has accelerated the preference for digital, which has already grown exponentially in the last two years, according to 79% of companies surveyed. Over the past year, a third of consumers have transacted more online than in the rest of their lives, and a quarter expect this change to be permanent.
Companies of all sizes, even the smallest, have understood the importance of digitalization, even if they often struggle to adapt all business processes to the new needs of consumers. Being present online, however, has now become crucial both to communicate with your customers, and to be found by people potentially interested in your products or services and is what, in many cases, allows companies to be able to survive in these uncertain times.
One tool that can help businesses of all sizes get closer to their customers is email marketing. There are those who think that it is a channel reserved purely for large companies, for sending massive communications intended for a wide audience, but, in reality, it is a valid and effective ally also for medium or small companies.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy based on sending emails to potential or existing customers. It is one of the most effective ways to promote products or services and, at the same time, develop valuable relationships with your contacts.
Its versatility makes it a useful tool for many different purposes and purposes, such as sending promotional emails (to convey discounts, offers, the launch of a new product, etc.) or sending newsletter or other informative emails (eg change of schedules, changes to services, updates, etc.).
And that’s not all. Email marketing has become a preferred channel through which to perform identity checks or two-factor authentication, useful and increasingly used systems for the security of digital payments and for secure registration to health records, subscription to healthcare services, or for receiving the results of analyzes and hospital reservations.
Why do email marketing if you’re a small business?
According to an analysis by Statista, with the internet increasingly accessible, the number of emails sent and received globally has increased every year since 2017. While an estimated 306.4 billion emails were sent and received daily in 2020, this figure is expected to increase to over 376.4 billion daily emails by 2025.
If that’s not enough, here are some reasons why you should include email marketing among your digital channels:
- It is a simple and direct channel that requires moderate investments, both in economic terms and in terms of time and resources, but which allows you to reach a wide audience and establish direct contact with consumers. It represents, in fact, one of the best tools to win new customers and, at the same time, to maintain solid long-term relationships with those already acquired.
- You can accurately segment and personalize your contact lists to reach the right audiences with the most appropriate content, based on their needs and interests.
- It is a valuable ally to get to know your audience more deeply and improve your business. Thanks to statistics, in fact, you can have full control over your campaigns and collect valuable information on readers’ interests by observing where they click, the links they open and the behaviors they implement.
- It allows you to inform your customers about the news of your business without the need for direct contact. With the lower incidence of the direct consumer-seller relationship, it is important to have effective communication tools.
9 Small Business Email Marketing Tips in 2022
After seeing in detail how to best structure your communication, you should be ready to send your first campaign. Before getting to work, however, it can help you to discover some other tricks and tips for planning successful email marketing campaigns.
- Focus on the object and preview text
- Welcome new subscribers with a welcome email
- Keep people up to date
- Integrate communication with your social networks
- Make sure your emails are responsive
- Put your face on it, if relevant
- Drive sales through special offers
- Don’t forget about special occasions
- Send reminders to inspire actions
1. Focus on the subject and preview text
The first things your recipients will notice when they receive your email will be the subject line and preview text. It is not always given the right importance, but these elements are what leads a person to open or trash a communication. For this reason it is absolutely essential to dedicate the right time to their creation and not to consider them secondary or trivial elements.
You need to be able to create the right impact to stimulate the reader’s interest and entice him to open your message immediately. It is important to be short (about 40 characters for the subject and 100 for the preview, but it is advisable to keep between 25-35 for a good view even through mobile devices), pay attention to punctuation and terms that can be interpreted as spam, anticipate the content of the email by creating curiosity and give a sense of urgency to invite a more immediate action (eg using terms such as: “you only have 24h”, “Immediately”, “Now”, …).
In addition, a study by Experian has proven that the use of emojis, the so-called “smileys”, within the subject line leads to a 56% increase in the opening rate of emails.
2. Welcome new subscribers with a welcome email
After a user has subscribed to your mailing list and their address has become part of your database, it is good practice to send them a welcome email. This type of message is very important because it represents the way you present yourself to your subscribers and from this comes the first impression that the recipient will make of your brand.
In addition to sending thanks for the subscription, welcome emails are a valid tool to convey other content to which you want to give visibility. It is the perfect opportunity to present your brand, convey the values of your company but also, and above all, to explain the benefits that your communications will bring to the reader and give advances on the communications they will receive from you in the future.
In addition, if your emails are aimed at selling a product or service, welcome emails can be used to send a discount code, coupon or special gift to encourage the recipient to finalize the purchase more quickly.
If the idea of having to send an email for every single subscription scares you, don’t worry! The automations have been designed precisely to overcome this problem, save you operating time and make the process automatic. In fact, it will be enough for you to set rules within the Platform and the emails will be sent automatically in response to an action taken by the user or to the occurrence of specific conditions (eg filling out the newsletter subscription form).
3. Keep people up to date
When planning your email marketing strategy, you can decide whether to send a newsletter on a regular basis (e.g. weekly or monthly) to share updates with your subscribers about your company, your products / services or your sector. As pointed out above, if you decide to follow this path, it is important to communicate to your readers the frequency of your communications and, above all, respect it so as not to create false expectations and obtain unsubscriptions.
In addition to newsletters, emails are the perfect tool to send informative communications to your customers, existing or potential, about news, changes or updates.
Very Italian, for example, uses emails to inform its customers of the new seasonal menus and takes the opportunity to remember the possibility of booking your table online or ordering meals at home.
4. Integrate communication with your social networks
Integrating your email marketing strategy with your social pages is a valid strategy to maximize the potential of these two different channels and achieve even more extraordinary performance.
There are several ways to use email and social media jointly, such as sending an email to promote subscriptions to your pages, share the newsletter on social media, include reviews received on Facebook in emails and much more.
To learn more about this topic, and discover all our suggestions in this regard, you can read the article dedicated to the integration between Facebook and email marketing.
If, on the other hand, you want a practical but effective suggestion, which can be implemented immediately in a simple way, we advise you to insert the buttons that refer to your social pages in your emails. It is a very immediate operation (just insert the reference block during the composition of the communication), but it is very useful to invite your readers to become fans of your pages and thus increase the number of followers.
5. Make sure your emails are responsive
Nowadays most people consult their emails via mobile devices (tablets and mobile phones). According to statistics, the percentage stands at around 81%, constituting the vast majority of readers.
For this reason, it is absolutely essential that the design of your communications adapts and is perfectly readable on any device that your recipient decides to use, to always offer him the best possible experience.
On the rdcom Platform there is a practical tool that allows you to test the display of your emails by offering you the possibility to preview your communications through numerous combinations of operating systems, devices and email clients.
Want to know what your email will look like on an iPhone 11, rather than Outlook or Apple Mail? With simple clicks you can do it, to make sure that your messages are displayed in the best possible way.
6. Put your face on it, if relevant
Including photos of employees, offices, or business activities in your communications is best placed to establish a more personal connection with your audience.
Sending a welcome email including the sender’s photo, such as that of the founders of Discorsi Online, for example, is a great way to convey a sense of closeness with the recipient and help him to give a face to the brand and the people with whom he is interfacing.
Of course, you must always remember that photos must be relevant to the context in which they are placed and ask yourself if they are suitable for your communication style and your goals.
7. Drive sales through special offers
During the sales period, or in case of special occasions such as Black Friday or Christmas shopping, email marketing proves to be a fast and effective tool to communicate your special offers to your customers.
You can send indistinct communications to your entire email list or create ad hoc messages, using strategies such as behavioral targeting. This technique involves the use of information collected from user behavior (e.g. pages visited, searches made, etc.) to identify their interests and, based on these, send them communications relating to products or services in line with their tastes and needs.
In this way you can notify your customers when a service they are interested in is on sale or suggest products that go well with purchases made in the past. In this way, you will act in an even more targeted way and increase the chances of obtaining a good conversion rate.
9. Send reminders to inspire actions
We have emphasized several times how emails represent a valid ally to entice recipients to make purchases or perform certain actions indicated by us.
Another way to make the most of the potential of emails is to use them to send reminders to inspire actions.
For example, you can use automations to send campaigns for abandoned carts, a very frequent problem that is faced by those who manage an e-commerce. In 2019, in fact, as many as 69.57% of consumers added items to their cart but left the site before completing the purchase.
Automatically sending an email whenever this situation occurs, is an excellent stratagem to stimulate the recipient to finalize their purchase and avoid losing a customer. Also in this case, a useful stratagem to increase the chances of this happening, is to insert an advantage for the customer (eg free shipping, 10% discount, a free product, etc.). in communication, perhaps with a time limit, to entice them to act as soon as possible and obtain the desired conversion.
Now that you know what email marketing is, why it’s important, and how to best use it, you’re officially ready to send your first campaigns. To do that, though, you need the right platform to help you run your business better.
RDCom offers you a complete tool, but at the same time immediate and easy to use, also suitable for those who are beginners and are not familiar with these channels. Through the Platform you have a practical editor to create emails and landing pages, a large section dedicated to statistics, various automations and the possibility of integrating SMS to implement your strategy.
What are you waiting for? Register now, free and without obligation, and you will receive 250 emails a day to test our Platform and discover its full potential.
