Email marketing is one of the best, and easiest ways to stay connected to your customers on a regular basis. Because email marketing is simple enough for anyone to learn pretty quickly, it’s a great tool to include in your business marketing strategy. In this blog, we’re going to highlight some key ways to take advantage of all the email marketing benefits that won’t break the bank and will help you to achieve great results.
Here are 3 tips to creating successful email marketing campaigns on a budget:
1) USE MAILCHIMP
One of the first things you’ll need to implement a successful email marketing strategy is an email marketing service. Email marketing cannot be done easily from a general email account, so it’s super beneficial to take advantage of one of the many email services available.
MailChimp is one of the best email marketing services out there. One of the great things about it is that there is little to no cost involved. If you have less than 2,000 subscribers/contacts, you can send as many emails as you want, for free! It is a great tool as you get started and begin to build your email marketing strategy and subscriber lists.
MailChimp also has some more advanced features in their paid service packages, which can be very helpful as your marketing campaigns become larger and more sophisticated. Even then, the cost is very reasonable and worth the investment.
If you’re already using another email marketing service and you love it, stick with it. MailChimp is just one option that we think is a great tool for people getting started.
2) SEND EMAILS WITH PURPOSE
The worst thing you can do in email marketing is send out emails that are not valuable to your prospects. You need to offer something of interest to the people receiving your emails or they can become disinterested and may even unsubscribe from your mailing list. Think about who you are sending information to and target your content to them and their needs.
For example, this past year we wrote a blog about the new OSHA regulations in the United States. We only sent out an email with the OSHA blog to our American contact lists because, although the information is important, it is irrelevant to other countries where the regulations do not apply.
Marketing emails can also include things like an offer or discount on your services, or maybe some new concrete design tips that you think people would find interesting. You can use pretty much anything that is industry or business related, as well as content that you believe those receiving the email would find interesting.
If you don’t have anything interesting or of value to say or use in your emails, you may want to re-evaluate your communication strategy and figure out how you can bring value to potential and current customers through email marketing. This is key in making sure that your email marketing has a positive effect.
3) SEND EMAILS OFTEN-ISH
It can be difficult to know how often you should be sending emails. You don’t want to send too many and annoy your contacts. Ultimately, there is no real correct answer because all markets are unique and will respond differently. There are some email marketing studies you can read online that may offer a starting point if you’re really unsure, but you’ll definitely want to do some testing to see how people engage and respond to your emails and email frequency. This will help you know how often you should be scheduling your emails for the future to get the best response.
*Note: We want to make sure the previous point is clear; Don’t just send emails for the sake of it. Make sure what you’re sending is of value or interest. You’ll see very quickly how disadvantageous pointless emails are.
You don’t need to spend a lot of money or time to make a successful email marketing campaign happen. Take advantaged of email marketing programs and services, and make sure that you’re sending emails that are interesting and add value to the people receiving them. If you have never tried email marketing before, get working on it. You’ll get a hang of it in no time and will be engaging your customers in a new and more proactive way.