I conducted a discovery session with a small business owner this week, who wanted to know where his time would be better spent – email or social media marketing? There’s a big problem with this question. It’s really not an either/or situation.
As this infographic from ReachMail explains, social and email marketing work best as marketing tools when they are used together.
If you’re wondering whether it’s a smart investment for your …
Email marketing is one of the best and most cost-effective ways for a small business owner to nurture leads, build a brand and generate sales. Whether you’re publishing an enewsletter on a regular basis, sharing information about educational events, like a webinar or announcing a special sale, email works! But… it only works effectively if you are testing your emails to make sure they engage subscribers. That means testing subject lines, send times, and calls to action.
Testing can be confusing. There are A/B tests you can run and multi-variate testing. The folks at EmailMonks have put together an infographic that offers some guidelines on how to help you achieve winning email test results.
For small business owners, developing authority in your niche is crucial if you want to generate more leads and sales for your company. The first step to building authority starts with defining your niche. After all, it’s much easier to be a big fish in a small pond when it comes to wielding influence.
Once you’ve settled on a niche, it’s time to plan a strategy that should include digital marketing. That means everything from SEO to social media and email. But as the following infographic from Jonha Revesencio points out, other tactics like speaking and publishing a book, should be a part of your marketing mix too.
For the umpteenth time today, I received a “cold call” email proposal from a company offering SEO services.
I don’t know why in this day and age of social media, companies still buy lists and send these emails out. This seems like a really dumb way to turn “leads” into sales. I can’t imagine their ROI is very good. In fact, I bet it’s less than 1 percent. Hardly worth the effort!
I recently read Digital Marketer’s blog post about their best email subject lines and was quite surprised at how low their open rates were compared to my own. Granted, they sent 1.25 million emails in 2014, and I only sent 65,000… but maybe that’s an important point. If your list gets too big, you run the risk of not being fully engaged with your audience.
Regardless of the reason, I thought it would be useful to share my own results – the best and the worst.
I researched what the common elements were to the subject lines. The majority fell under the category of Self-Interest. That makes sense because they are usually direct and speak to a specific benefit your audience will gain by opening the email.
I love the holidays, but I’m not a fan of holiday shopping.
Ok… that’s not exactly true. I’m NOT a fan of running around all over town looking for gifts! I’d much rather shop online.
The “official” holiday shopping season kicks off at Thanksgiving. But now that it’s October, that gives you only a few more weeks to plan your holiday promotions. Many businesses conduct email marketing campaigns for the holiday season. If that’s your strategy, this VerticalResponse infographic of top email subject line words should help. After all, there’s no sense going to all the trouble of creating a holiday campaign, if your emails never get opened. (FYI – take note of the fine print at the bottom of this infographic. VerticalResponse says these are NOT actual subject lines. They are for example purposes only.)
If you’ve been following my blog lately, you know that I’ve been writing about email newsletters, and why they are a useful marketing tool for small businesses.
So what do you do if you start publishing an email newsletter, but no one reads it?
First off, don’t give up!
Do you publish an email newsletter for your business? It’s a smart way to stay in touch with your customers, and develop a good relationship with them, among other reasons. If you’re ready to publish an email newsletter, here are a few strategies to keep in mind:
1. Choose a Delivery Method – It’s important to select a reliable email marketing solution provider to ensure that your newsletter gets delivered to your subscribers, and not automatically dumped into a spam folder. Companies like MailChimp or Constant Contact offer several benefits such as:
►Tracking capabilities – reports allow you to see bounce rates, forwarded, delivered/undeliverable and sent emails, as well as conversions, click-throughs and more.