smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

Email marketing can be of great benefit to your business if you get it right, increasing sales instantly and offering you a measurable marketing strategy.

How well your email campaign performs will depend on a number of factors. SmallBusiness.co.uk guides you through the basics.

Plan your campaign

This sounds obvious, but every marketing email that you send out should have a specific purpose, a distinct call to action, such as 'click here to visit the website' and a real reason why it needed to be sent to make it relevant to your customers. You could, for example, time your email around events or times of year that coincide with special offers, such as Christmas.

Top tips:

- There are software programs that can be used to personalise your emails. Having your client's name at the top will sound much more approachable than saying ‘Dear customer’.

- The text or ‘copy’ on your email should be targeted and relevant to its recipient where possible. This may mean doing more than one batch, but the results will usually be better in the long run.

- You should give your customer the option to opt out of receiving emails as it may not be their preferred way of finding out about your services. This does not necessarily mean you will lose them as a customer.

- If people are responding to your email time and time again but have not opted out, they have probably changed their email address or sent your email to the junk folder. That means it’s important to renew your customer mailing lists as often as you can. Doing so will improve your open rates and give you a better idea of your audience.

- Thanking your clients for buying from you following any marketing campaign can go a long way towards generating repeat business. It’s also a perfect opportunity to sell more to them, or at least find out when it would be best to contact them again.

Checklist
Your company’s reputation is very important, so you don’t want to bombard your customers with inaccurate emails. Before you send a marketing email check that:

- The subject line is correct
- Any personalisation is added and is correct
- Relevant dates – e.g. deadlines – are still right
- Calls to action are present
- Your website address is included
- All your links work
- Spelling is correct
- Images are working
- Your company details and registration number are present and correct (this information must appear by law)
- Unsubscribe options are present.

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