small-business-marketing

Email is a powerful and effective marketing tool. It's incredibly affordable and extremely flexible. Used properly, it's unbeatable.

Used badly, it's a recipe for disaster. I see way too many small businesses that jump into it without understanding the most basic ground rules. And they pay the price.

So let's go back to school. Here are seven basic principles that should guide every email marketing campaign.

1. Get permission. This isn't optional. Spamming a customer will turn your business into a pariah. It can also get you sued if you violate the federal CAN-SPAM law. You can manage the permission process yourself, or you can work with reputable marketing partner.

2. Keep it clean. A "clean" list of email addresses will be targeted to your specific industry niche, product offering, or customer segment. The cleaner your list, the higher your response rates - and your ROI - will be.

3. Take your time. Many companies use "drip" email marketing campaigns to build successful, long-term customer relationships. These campaigns deliver value to the recipients (for example, a whitepaper or discount offer) while setting the stage for a series of additional communications.

4. Keep it simple. Some of your customers will respond to rich HTML or graphical email. Some dislike that approach - or they simply filter it out. Meet your customers halfway by allowing them to set their email preferences, or deliver plain-text email with links to rich-text versions.

5. Don't wear out your welcome. If a customer wants off your list, then of course you'll comply. But also consider removing a customer if they simply don't respond to your email over a specific number of messages or period of time. You're more likely to annoy them than you are to win them over with even more email.

6. Remember: Content is king! As I said in a previous post, quality content is the single most effective marketing tool most companies will ever use. Use email to deliver useful, interesting content - not a series of one-off, hard-sell sales pitches.

7. Experiment, experiment, experiment. Email is a wonderful place to try out new types of content, offerings, messages, and other options. This approach can be especially helpful if you're using a marketing automation tool that can capture and manage feedback from your email marketing experiments.