Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses in 2023

All you need to know about email marketing

Email marketing can help you create a powerful working relationship with your clients. However, there is a misconception that email marketing isn’t nearly as effective for smaller businesses as it is for the big leagues. They’re quite wrong.

For instance, email writers were able to pull off an average ROI of $42 for every $1 they spent on email marketing. More importantly, many businesses continue to rely on email marketing for 80% retention. The proof is in the pudding. If other small businesses can convert clients through email, then why should you miss out?

Email marketing can be lucrative if you know the right steps. Here are 16 tips that all professional email content writers use to increase sales.

Emphasize Quality Over Quantity

An important trait of emails that maximizes client conversion rate is the quality of your content. Remember, it’s not about the number of emails you send, it’s the quality of your content that gets the most attention.

Instead of focusing on the frequency of emails, think about what your subscribers really want from you. Focus on their actual pain points. Make sure your email campaigns, as obtrusive as they are, offer something of value to your readers.

Maximize Your Subscriber Count with an Embedded Sign Up Form

Maximize Your Subscriber Count with an Embedded Sign Up Form

A crucial ingredient of success in email marketing is to have a large number of subscriber count. Now the trick to increasing your number of subscribers is to make your subscription form easy to fill and access. Most websites make this process super difficult by adding unnecessary extra steps.

The would-be subscriber has to click on a link. Wait for the link to load.  And then only do they get a chance to fill in the details (which can be a separate headache of its own).

Instead of doing all of the above, provide your clients with an embedded sign-up form with as few fields as possible. Our recommendation is to only ask for their email address – not their name, phone, country, etc. No one really has the time to fill in all those details, and frankly, you don’t need them for email marketing (for the most part).

You can increase your rate of subscription by as much as 20% to 50% by replacing the link with an opt-in form. This is because your visitors no longer have to jump through all the extra hoops to subscribe to you.

Encourage Sign-Ups Anywhere You Can

Speaking of sign-ups, it is very important to give your customers every opportunity possible to subscribe to your newsletter. This can be done by spreading newsletter sign-up forms where appropriate in your website. You can increase the rate of subscription by adding CTAs on your homepage, about us page, and also the footer.

Pro tip: Add an optional opt-in form on the checkout page, if you’re processing online orders. For those of you using a WordPress website, this can be easily done with an email plugin for WooCommerce.

Optimize Your Emails for Mobile

Optimize Your Emails for Mobile

More than 46% of email opens were done through mobile phones – and the number is only going to increase. Therefore, it pays to optimize your emails for mobile phones. Going forward in 2021, there really is no way around it. People just prefer to check their email when they’re relaxed and free of mind.

Furthermore, your email must respond to the subscriber’s type of screen – whether it is a desktop, tablet, or a boiler. This will provide the best experience possible. No one likes to read an email with stretched pictures and text. If your subscribers have to pinch the screen with their fingers to navigate around the email, then you need a better position.

All it takes is just one negative experience from your subscriber to lose trust in your brand. One favorite tool that most email writers use is Mailchimp.

Segment Your List  to Improve Relationships (extremely important!)

Segment Your List to Improve Relationships

Email marketing is never a one-size-fits-all rule because every prospect isn’t the same. You should already have several buyer personas – each with unique needs.

So sending a generic email will get ignored by your readers. To foster more meaningful relationships, you should use segmentation to create optimized email campaigns.

When done properly, segmentation fosters your relationship giving you a chance to communicate effectively with the consumer. Start by dropping those annoying canned responses.

Pro tip: If a major holiday is around the corner, your team can send all customers a post-purchase welcome campaign wishing them a joyous holiday season.

Rather than delivering bland messages to every customer, segmentation lets you customize emails that mention nearby festivities taking place in the customer’s immediate vicinity.

If you have repeat customers and subscribers who are interacting with your emails, this is a great opportunity to boost brand loyalty and maximize revenue. Subscribers that maintain a higher level of interest in your products and services should be given extra attention.

One way to shower extra attention is to make an email list specifically for these clients. This way, you can send them special discounts and offers to encourage them to make even more purchases than usual.

Sending Automated Emails

Automated emails are no longer the domain of mega-corporations with million dollar budgets to boot. There are tons of autoresponders like MailChimp and Sendinblue that let you send automated emails to customers based on where they are in their buyer journey.

For instance, you can configure an autoresponder tool to send an automated welcome message to new subscribers as soon as they’re done signing up to your newsletter.

This is important because you want to make sure you respond to your customers right away and not keep them waiting. New customers often use your company’s response time to decide if you’re trustworthy or not. Companies that give immediate responses often deliver high-quality products.

If you’re not sure that marketing automation is a good tool, you can test it out for free with MailChimp. You can create free automation workflows for your first 2000 contacts.

Make Your Emails Accessible for Blind and Low Vision Users

Make Your Emails Accessible for Blind and Low Vision Users

You can now use technology to make your email more accessible for users with low vision. This is possible by using screen readers and voice readers. Other than that, you can fine-tune your email so that it is more legible by low vision readers, for example:

  • Make your email concise and to-the-point by using short sentences and bullet points. Don’t use marketing jargon!
  • Write helpful text in the ALT tags of images in the email
  • Use H2 and H3 headers to maintain content hierarchy
  • Choose a font and layout that makes the email more readable (make it compatible with your brand)
  • Use detailed anchor text for links (don’t just write, ‘click here’!). This will help out subscribers who are using screen readers.

Ask Subscribers to Add Your Email to Their List of Contacts

Another way of maximizing your chances of appearing in your subscriber’s inbox is to be added to their address book.

When sending out emails to new subscribers, make sure to add text that persuades them to add your contact to their address list. This will boost your rate of deliverability because contacts are essentially instructing their email provider that they want to receive more emails from you (it also ensures your email doesn’t land in their junk folder!).

Reflect Your Brand Personality in Your Emails

Your emails must be easy to recognize and always reflect how your brand looks. This means you have to keep your company logo at a prominent location of the email (usually the top) and follow your brand design for the font, color palette, styles, image, and everything else that is unique about your company.

You should borrow similar design elements from your website, such as the search bar, to make your emails appear more consistent with your brand.

Use Unique Typography

By using unique colors and typography, your email will grab audience attention. Use creative fonts and bright colors but make sure they go well with your brand personality. Once you have figured out the appropriate typefaces, deploy them across all the emails you send out.

There are many tools that make this easy such as Typecast, and Fontest.

Make Strong CTAs

What good is sending an email if it doesn’t convince subscribers to click through and take the desired action? To make this possible, you need to create a strong and prominent Call to Action in your email.

The CTA should be highlighted using enticing visuals, most preferably, your brand colors to make them prominent.

Colors have been shown to influence the emotions of readers. For example, the color Red creates a sense of urgency, Yellow stimulates the buyers,  Orange shows an upbeat attitude,  Green signals growth, and Black shows authority. Choose the ideal color scheme that best suits your branding and make your CTAs more persuasive.

Tell Your Brand Story

When a new reader subscribes to your email list, the best way to engage them is to let them know you better. This is done by telling them your brand story. Your band story will go a long way in in creating a great relationship between you and your readers.

The story should connect with your readers. It’s not just about your business. Your business is the focal point, but the goal of the story is to tell your customers that you relate to them, you understand their problems, and that they are just like you.

Hubspot wrote a very helpful guide on how you can tell your brand story. Click here to check it out.

Create a Landing Page Specifically for Your Email Campaign

Create a Landing Page Specifically for Your Email Campaign

If you really want to impress your subscribers, create landing pages specifically for your email campaigns. Creating compatible landing pages for your emails establishes a more consistent brand experience for your readers.

Because of its importance in your overall funnel, it is imperative that you learn how to optimize your landing pages for bigger conversion rates. One unique advantage of landing pages is that they attract traffic not just from your email list, but also from search engines and social media.

Leveraging Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

FOMO works because no one likes to miss out on a good deal. However, if that discount will be around forever, they will take their sweet time to avail it. This is why leveraging FOMO strategies in your email is an effective way of maximizing conversions. This can be easily done by running limited-time offers. You can also create time-sensitive discount coupons. However you go about it, let your subscribers know that, by not availing the opportunity right now, they are definitely missing out.

Use Social Media to Grow Your Email List

Your website isn’t the only way to increase your email subscribers. You can easily use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get more subscribers. Don’t be afraid to ask your followers on social media to subscribe to your newsletter and explain to them the benefits of joining.

Do Not Break Your Promises

Do Not Break Your Promises

Now that you have convinced your subscribers to sign up to the company newsletter, it’s time to follow through with your promises. Empty promises not only crush customer expectations but also convince them to leave your business for good. Many businesses promise their subscribers something special if they sign up but don’t end up delivering at all.

This is the quickest way of killing your subscriber count and sends a bad message overall.

To retain your subscribers, you have to diligently stick to your promise in terms of deliverability as well as timing. If you promise a weekly newsletter, then you need to send that newsletter on a set day every week.

Use Email for Cross-Selling

Amazon has mastered this marketing strategy. If you haven’t already signed up with them, make sure to do so and watch how they run their email marketing campaigns.

When you add a product to your Amazon wishlist, you will receive an email within a few days with recommendations for similar items and when you buy a product, you will receive an email containing even more products for you to buy. And guess what? It actually works.

Wrapping Up

Email marketing is here to stay and will become one of the most effective means of reaching out to your leads and subscribers. It is affordable, personal, and if done right, can build your brand, generate more revenue, and turn your customers into loyal brand advocates.

Now that you know some of the most essential email marketing tips, it’s time to construct your email campaign for success in 2021.

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