E-mail marketing is a great way for local businesses to explore a number of opportunities to connect and drive sales in their region. With E-mail marketing, you get the opportunity to talk to customers directly, even when they have not visited your store in a long time.
From the number of promotional ideas for a small business, the strategy of marketing through E-mails is generally underutilized by small businesses, even when it can give an ROI of about 122%. This figure is four times more than what social media can offer. And by partnering with local agencies such as marketing agencies in Atlanta or Pittsburgh for example, you can boost those numbers.
In case you do not use E-mail marketing for your local business, it’s time to start using it to enhance your business and boost sales. You can leverage its power to win new customers and ensure that they keep coming back. Before sharing some simple and effective tips for improving your local E-mail marketing, we would be discussing the various methods that can be applied to build a local E-mail list.
Methods to Build a Local E-mail List
There are a number of ways to build a local E-mail list for your business. These methods can be both online as well as offline. Keep reading to find out more:
Online Methods for Building an E-mail List
- Make use of your Website: In case you own a website, you can make use of it to build your e-mail list so you can take part in local small business marketing. This can be done by placing sign-up forms in different sections of the website, such as the sidebar or at the end of a blog.
You can even use pop-up forms that generally appear in the center of the screen after a certain amount of time has passed. Other types of sign-up forms include:
- Slide-in Forms: These are boxes that appear at the bottom corner of the page as the customer scrolls down. They do not cover the content when they are displayed.
- Sign-up Bars: These forms appear in the form of bars at the top or bottom of the page. As the customer scrolls down, they can be static or dynamic.
- Welcome Screens: These appear when the customer lands on your site for the first time. It can even take up the whole screen.
- Create Landing Pages: Make use of landing pages to target customers or visitors from a particular geographical area. This can be done by having a clear call-to-action on the landing page that can direct the user to sign-up. The process of signing up should be as simple as possible, along with the least number of fields that need to be filled.
- Promote your Landing Pages: In case you’re using landing pages, then it’s important to promote them on Facebook or Google with the help of paid advertisements. This is because both these platforms help you to target users according to a specific location.
Additionally, the landing pages can also be promoted on social media by linking the URL of the landing page with your posts or profile. You can include social sharing buttons with every E-mail that is sent to the subscribers and further motivate them to share your newsletters.
- Hold a Lead Magnet: Holding a lead magnet refers to giving your users different types of incentives for sharing their personal details with you. This can be in the form of a discount code, a free E-book, or a video course- basically anything that can give them a reason to sign up or subscribe.
- Cross-promotion: You can tie-up or collaborate with other businesses to gain more subscribers. This is done by asking them to promote your products, services, or events, and in return, you can do the same for them.
Offline Methods to Building an E-mail List
- Encourage customers to subscribe: Getting your in-store customers to subscribe to your E-mail list is a great offline method to build up your E-mail list. In this method, it’s advisable to ask the customers to sign-up on a tablet or phone instead of on a printed form. This is to ensure that you get the correct E-mail ID as the writing of some customers can be illegible.
- Use QR codes and short URLs: The URLs that you create for your website should be easy to remember. Alternatively, creating QR codes with a logo is a great way to bring customers to your landing page. This is because the customer has to simply scan the QR code and he/she would be redirected to the landing page automatically. The URLs and QR codes can also be printed on business cards, shopping bags, etc.
- Visit local events for lead generation: It’s a great idea to visit local events that are conducted in your area so you can collect prospective leads. By visiting local events, you can circulate your business cards and collect contact details of potential customers and subscribers. You can even have people sign up on your tablet or phone on the spot. Local events provide a great platform for building links with potential subscribers.
Tips for Enhancing Local E-Mail Marketing
The following are some tips and tricks to improve E-mail marketing for a small business:
Create an Eye-Catching Subject Line
The subject line plays an essential role in how many visitors land on your page through a link, also referred to as Click Through Rate (CTR). A large portion of your present subscribers will open an E-mail if the subject line is attractive enough. You can even use local references in the topic line so that it immediately catches the interest of your subscribers. A good way to make the subject line different is to personalize it with the place or name of a person.
Select a Good Time to E-mail
A good time to send E-mails to your list is when the subscribers are most likely to check their mail and click. It can be at the start of a working day, after dinner time, or over the weekend. The time can vary according to different businesses. In case you’re not sure of when to send the E-mails, you can try sending them out at different times of the day or week, and then conduct an analysis when you get responses.
Offer Relevant Deals to your Subscribers
Every customer is attracted by relevant deals and offers. Many customers prefer E-mails that contain unique promotions from local businesses. However, it’s important to check that the deal or the discount that is being offered by your local business is relevant to your subscribers or not.
Apply Split Testing
When it comes to E-mail marketing for a small business, it’s a great idea to do split tests, irrespective of whether you’re doing a local PPC campaign or running a local ad on Facebook. Split-tests give you a snapshot of the efficiency of the whole process of E-mail marketing for a local business. They can boost your conversion rates.
However, you need to test only one aspect at a time for guaranteed, precise outcomes. This can be done by dividing the E-mail list into two parts and then sending the same E-mail to both the groups with only a little modification. The most successful posts can then be used in future campaigns.
Optimize your E-mail for Mobile Users
With the increasing number of mobile users across the world, it’s most likely that most of your subscribers would open their E-mails on a mobile device. Therefore, it’s important to optimize your E-mails according to mobile phones. In case you do not, the whole purpose of local E-mail marketing might get defeated as the E-mails that you send can end up in the trash folder. They should be easy to read and eye-catching when reading on smartphones and tablets.
Form Customized Landing Pages
In case your business has different branches or is located at multiple locations, then it is not a good idea to send the same URL to all the subscribers. In case you want to build hyper-local agreements with your subscribers, you need to develop custom landing pages for different clients. This way, you would be able to guarantee that your customers can find what they want with just a single click. It also makes the subscribers feel that the E-mail has been personalized for them.
Use the Right Images
To make your E-mails interesting for your subscribers, it’s essential to include the correct and relevant images. E-mails that are easy to go through would yield better responses from customers. Including relevant images would enhance the user experience of your E-mail campaign. The images need to be of a proper size so that they are equally enticing on mobile devices as well as desktops. The ideal image size is 640 pixels.
Conclusion
E-mail marketing for a small business is an affordable and powerful tool to gain more customers, boost sales, and increase revenue especially with a lead generation software. The above methods are sure to help you improve the local E-mail marketing of your business and create substantial traffic for your webpage. Hopefully, the tips included in this article have helped you understand how E-mail marketing can boost sales of a business.
