Email marketing is a great way to stay connected with customers, share what’s new with your business, and introduce offerings and promotions. There are various types of email marketing, from newsletters and simple sales emails to full-on automated campaigns.

No matter what type of email marketing you do, there are some strategies you can apply that can make your efforts more successful. In this post, we’ll share some ways to grow your email list as a small business and successfully carry out email marketing.

Continually Building the Contact List

A key part of email marketing is the people reading your emails. For two reasons, the heart of your contact list is people who have purchased your service or product.

The first reason is practical; you likely already have their contact information, including their email address. So, consistently consolidating them into a list is often the primary way businesses create and grow their contact lists.

Catrina Maxwell of CatMax Photography
Photo Credit: Jolie Loren
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The second reason is that these customers will likely be the most engaged recipients of your email marketing because they’ve already shown that they like and will pay for your offering.

Of course, you always want to grow your contact list with engaged potential customers as well to keep your business top of mind and convert them. Here are some methods for collecting as many email addresses from them and others as possible.

Make it easy for people to sign up. There are plenty of potential customers who want to hear from you and be a part of your email list, but they may not know how to join.
Make it known that you send emails and make it as easy as possible for people to sign up for them by adding sign-up opportunities to multiple places. Note everywhere (physically and digitally, i.e., website, social media, storefronts, pop-up shops, events you and your team attend, etc.) that you get engagement or views from potential customers, and ensure you’re providing opportunities for people to join your email list.
Regularly sweep your business email. Create a folder or tag in your email to notate communication with people who’ve expressed interest in your offering but aren’t clients yet. Have your team do the same.
Then, regularly download these individuals’ contact information and add them to your email list.
Notify business contacts. If you use email marketing to send a newsletter and share company updates, it’s a good idea to let your vendors and other people you work with in your industry know and invite them to sign up to receive those messages. You can reciprocate and join their email list too.
This is a great way for you both to stay updated with what the other has going on and to open the door for partnerships.
Offer a reason for people to sign up for your list. This strategy takes more time and resources but can be very effective, hence its popularity. It’s also a little more advanced and tends to work best with a strategic automated follow-up campaign that moves people through your sales funnel (more on that later).
The incentive is a complimentary item or service you provide automatically via email once someone agrees to sign up for your email list. The item/service could be a checklist, guide, or something else.

(L to R): Beth Moffatt and Paige Risley of We Recruit Well
Photo Credit: CatMax Photography
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Strategies for Successful Email Marketing

As people become more discerning about what they’ll allow in their inbox and spend time reading, emails must provide true value (and not just financial).

Here are some ways to do that and manage email marketing in general.

Gretchen Class Diaz
Photo Credit: CatMax Photography

Personalization is key. People want to feel a connection and that this email is specifically for them. When crafting your emails, think about your customers and what they care about, along with what they need and how you can provide that.
You can also personalize by having people notate what kind of content they’re interested in from you (deals, news, etc.) when they sign up. Then, you can break down your contact list into multiple sub-contact lists accordingly.
Personalization on your end is important as well. Having up-to-date photos of your team, offerings, processes, and timely images for general marketing content will elevate your emails and further build a connection with the recipient.
Remember the basics. You also shouldn’t abandon the basics, aka strategies that have worked for companies for years and likely will continue to work.
This includes sending things like welcome emails, product and service promos, customer anniversary emails, and more. These emails may seem easy and slightly superfluous, but there’s a reason they’re used so frequently. They’re often personalized and help build brand loyalty and connection.
Educate and sell. It’s also best to offer a balance of content that’s educational and content that promotes your products and services.
This is a win-win because it keeps subscribers engaged with your company because you’re adding value to their lives but also doesn’t let your offerings become an afterthought.
Let technology make your life easier. Leverage the new tools your email marketing software or customer relationship management (CRM) software comes out with or that other companies launch.
Many of these tools can allow you to put in place advanced strategies with far less time, money, and guesswork.
Use automation. Last but certainly not least, automation is incredibly powerful. Create email campaigns that move people through the sales funnel for you.
It will take thought and work to set this up, but it will pay off in the end. You’ll not only save time in the long run, but these types of campaigns can have a high conversion rate, which is why they’re so popular.
You can also use email automation for practical purposes and move people through planning and logistics processes for your product or service seamlessly.

When it comes to email marketing, it’s all about quality. A small contact list filled with engaged recipients is more valuable than a robust one that provides low open- and click-through rates.

The same goes for the emails you send. Sending fewer emails that provide true value versus more that don’t is the way to go, especially if time and resources are limited.

If you’re looking for photography services that provide a variety of images for your marketing needs, explore the CatMax Photography Personal Branding Experience package. Product photography is also available.

Happy communicating!

Sources:

Business News Daily, Better Data and Personalization Are the Future of Email Marketing; Federal Trade Commission, CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business