Why is email marketing for small business owners? Using email for your marketing can be one of the best decisions you make as a small business owner. Most businesses use email marketing: from large brands down to tiny, local businesses. But for a small business it’s a must.
On a website, most of your visitors will leave without ever having taken any action. Most website visitors won’t buy on their first visit to your website. Studies show that it takes multiple touch points before someone will buy.
But if you can capture their email, by offering something of value in exchange, you can build a longer term relationship with them and this can lead to more sales, even from the same number of visitors.
Email Marketing For Small Business Owners
On a website, a visitor has only a small window of time to buy whatever it is you’re selling. Most wont, and most won’t ever hit your website again! That’s a shame, particularly if you’ve worked really hard building content, (or spent advertising budget) to get them there in the first place.
So if you can extend the time with which they can make a buying decision, you would wouldn’t you!? With email marketing, you offer something of value on your website in exchange for your visitor’s email address. This is known as a “lead magnet” and it can be anything from a free video series to an ebook. So long as you provide a great value add for your website visitor, some of them will sign up to your email list.
Email Marketing For Small Business Owners – Nurturing
The email list is for prospect “nurturing“! On your website, you don’t have much time to get to know your visitors, and they don’t have much time to get to know you. But once on your email list, you can send them information which is of value and build trust.
On an email list, you can continue sending information to your subscribers over a much longer time frame than would be possible on only a website. When you provide value, the law of reciprocity kicks in; your subscribers will get to know, like and trust you (assuming you’re trust-worthy!)
If you do a good job of providing value for them, they are much more likely to see you as an authority in your field and trust what you’re telling them. When this happens they are much more likely to buy what you’re offering, assuming it’s a good fit for their needs.
The email list also allows you to give your potential customers several touch points which wouldn’t be possible from a website. Since it can take around 6-8 touch points before someone makes a purchase from a website, this is definitely a good idea. (This number differs across different businesses and services).
Setting Up Your Offer
To collect emails from a website, you need to join an email marketing service and create a form. Once created, you can collect the code for your form and place it on your website. Make sure to place it on every page so that every visitor will see it. You can even set up your website with a pop up form to give more people the opportunity to sign up to your email list.
To encourage people to sign up to your email newsletter, you need to offer something which is suitably valuable for your website visitors. Make the benefits of signing up visible on your form. Here’s an example of a popup for you can see on one of my websites: (Click here to view it).
Emailing Your List
You’ll need some kind of marketing strategy set up to drive targeted traffic towards your website. See also target market persona.
Once your list starts to grow you can communicate with your subscribers through automated email messages. Depending on your business, you might send out email messages manually, informing them of your services/offers etc. But you can also automate email messages to go out to your list on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, according to your needs.
Here’s a few emails I’ve sent out to one of my email lists recently.
Summary
With a website, most visitors won’t buy from you, at least not on their first visit. To get your visitors coming back to your website more frequently, you can use an email marketing list. Send subscribers to newer content on your website and remind them of your products/services on a regular basis. You can send out emails with a frequency which is appropriate to the needs of your subscribers.
Most website visitors will want several interactions or “touch points” before they make a purchase. This is where the power of email marketing comes in. Email marketing allows you to grab their email address and follow up with subscribers building trust over a longer timeframe.
