Email marketing should matter to your business because it works. It is the only way to get your message in front of your audience, guaranteed. You may think posting your recent blog posts and events on Facebook everyday is effective, but thanks to the ever-changing Facebook algorithm, chances are not everyone from your audience is seeing those messages.
If you send that same audience an email with the same message, you can guarantee it will show up in their Inbox (whether or not they open the email, however, depends on how enticing your subject line is).
Why send email newsletters?
Sending emails to your email list on a consistent basis means they have a better chance to see what you are offering and how you can help them. You are consciously choosing to keep your audience informed and connected with your business, so they can watch their products, while if they have a physical store getting a new shopfront from a dealer online could be a great choice to make their shop more attractive to clients.
If you have an upcoming special event or sale, newsletters are the best way to ensure your entire audience has access to this knowledge. It’s also a great way to reward loyal customers and clients with specials unique to newsletter subscribers only!
Email marketing is customizable and brand-able. You can create your own template that reflects your business – including colours, logos, photos, and more.
You can also organize your audience by birthday, interests and more – and then send specialized messages to them targeting that particular segment of information.
What email platform should I use?
Email marketing does not have to be time consuming or expensive. There are cost effective (in fact, there are free) email platforms available for business owners. Some of the more popular email marketing platforms include:
MailChimp
For free (up to a certain number of subscribers) MailChimp offers a variety of reports, including open rates and click through rates. You can easily change colours to match your branding and add your logo, pictures, etc. to your email templates. MailChimp is also very user-friendly.
AWeber
While AWeber is not free, they do offer low-cost plans (starting at $19 USD per month) that include unlimited emails and extensive reporting capabilities. They also have customizable templates, but tend to keep things simple too, which is prefect if you prefer email marketing without a lot of extra bells and whistles.
Active Campaign
If you are looking for a more robust e-marketing platform that is still affordable, Active Campaign can make an email appear as though it is written as the result of a specific action the recipient took on a previous email. There are a lot of systems and integrations available with Active Campaign as this platform is known for its intuitiveness.
Email marketing is effective, easy and inexpensive. You can reach a large number of people without having to worry about how many people will actually receive the message, let alone take action on it. After all, why do you think so many big box stores send emails every day? Because email marketing works!