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How to Market Your Small Business Online
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Article 6: Market Your Company Through E-mail
E-mail marketing can be cost-effective for small businesses. And, when leveraged properly, it can help you build relationships with your customers, says Jeanne Jennings, an e-mail marketing consultant in Washington, D.C., and author of “The Email Marketing Kit” (SitePoint, 2007).
“By building that relationship you make your promotional pitches much more effective,” she says.
Although you can send out your e-mails using your existing e-mail service, Jennings doesn’t recommend it. Instead, find an e-mail service provider, or ESP.
These companies do more than just send e-mails, Jennings says. Among their other services: tracking and reporting information, ensuring your e-mails are rendered properly for various e-mail clients, and offering templates that make it easy to create e-mails without hiring a programmer.
To give you an idea of pricing, consider the fees (at press time) of Constant Contact, a popular ESP for small businesses. The Waltham, Mass.-based company charges $15 a month for lists of up to 500 e-mails, and, on the other end, $150 a month for lists numbering 10,001 to 25,000 e-mails. There’s no limit on the number of times per month you can send your e-mails.
To avoid being seen as a spammer, get permission from your customers before sending them e-mails. Let them know exactly what they can look for, and how often.
Don’t get too send-happy either. Permission-based e-mail that comes too frequently or that is no longer relevant was considered to be spam by nearly half of respondents to a 2005 survey conducted by DoubleClick, a provider of digital marketing services. Also, you need to make it easy for recipients to opt out of e-mails by including an unsubscribe link.
Jennings offers these additional tips:
- Create a mix of editorial content along with promotional. “Editorial is what’s going to get [your e-mail] opened and read,” she says. “If every month is just a promo, that gets old very quickly.”
- Include reader-focused content. “Put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re sending it to,” she says. “What’s in it for them? That’s really where the relationship comes in . . . What would be a benefit? Anything that helps them do their job better or enjoy one of their hobbies more.”
- One way to find an ESP is to look at the messages you receive from other companies, since many ESPs put their logo on the bottom of e-mails they send.
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How to Market Your Small Business Online
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