Email marketing is a great method of keeping in touch with your clients and, as part of a wider marketing strategy, it can help any business build its client base and profits. But there’s one simple mistake many small businesses make when it comes to email marketing and it’s a key reason email marketing fails.
The reason? Small business use email marketing to sell to rather than inform their clients.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not inappropriate to use email marketing to spruik your small business’ products or services. To be effective, however, you need to maintain a balance between selling and providing valuable and interesting information to clients.
For example, if you’re a lawyer who distributes a regular newsletter to clients, the majority of the newsletter should provide engaging information that’s likely to be relevant to your readers. You might pop in one or two articles that are selling pieces, but they shouldn’t make up the bulk of the newsletter. Better still, directly link your selling pieces to your information pieces. If you’ve written an article about the importance of having a will, mention your legal will making services or provide a short-term discount offer to clients.
What if you want to inform clients about a special offer your business is running? Personally, I see nothing wrong in sending out occasional emails such as these. Just make sure the offer is genuine and indeed worthwhile and don’t do it regularly. If you’re emailing clients weekly or even monthly with special offers, your emails will quickly be deleted or blocked.
With some thought and regular effort, email marketing can be a valuable tool for your small business. Just keep some simple factors in mind to make it work for you.