Street Fight recently released their Local Merchant Report 2015 which found that as far as digital marketing goes in the small business space, 47 percent of survey respondents rank email as their “top-performing and relied on channel.”
While the report found various adoption rates for other types of marketing efforts such as mobile advertising, email remains supreme. There are many reasons for email’s perennial success:
- Email is practically free.
- Services such as MailChimp make creating email campaigns super simple.
- Customers like hearing from brands they trust.
- Email is personal; it arrives in our pocket or on our laptops at the coffeehouse.
- It’s flexible. Traffic slow today? Send out a flash sale or other traffic driver via email.
- Measurement tools help track clicks and opens, mixing in some helpful analytics.
All of this sounds great. But are you taking advantage of the ease and success of email? Remember that email’s not about spamming or pushing the Summer Sale-a-thon. Use email to:
- Share the brand or small business’s blog posts
- Tell a humorous story about the business’s humble beginnings
- Encourage loyalty card signups
- Offer a great freebie such as a recipe or downloadable calendar
- Give free solutions for common life problems such as overflowing toilets (if you run a plumbing company) or sore backs (if you are a physical therapist)
All good email campaigns start with a list. Connectivity’s new product, Customer Insights, helps build customer lists automatically using data points already in place such as phone calls and emails. Other ways to build your customer list are at point-of-sale and through special events.
Check out two of our blog posts for great email marketing ideas for small businesses. And good luck with your email efforts!
Four Ways to Grow Your Email List from Scratch
Tell Us More and We’ll Buy More
Jennifer is a Content Strategist at Connectivity.