5 Vital Email Marketing Tips for New Business Owners

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Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience. Globally, there are about 3.8 billion email users. It’s safe to say that if you have a product or service you’re selling, your ideal customers have an email address.

Businesses that ask for consumers to subscribe to their mailing list tend to see more sales, more repeat customers, and overall more engagement across all platforms. It’s hard to deny the success of email marketing, especially when you consider some estimates say that a good strategy can potentially yield a 4,400 percent return on investment!

If you’re a new business owner or just looking for some specific advice regarding your email campaigns, stick around. We are going to take a look at five vital email marketing tips that will help you grow your list, and as a result, your business.

Use Personalization to Improve Engagement

The connection between brands and customers has grown exponentially over the last decade. Smartphones make it easier than ever for people to shop and engage with their favorite businesses.

As a result of social media, people can now talk freely with others around the world about their favorite brands. However, along with this ease of communication came an explosion of businesses. In an effort to break through the competition, brands started implementing personalization at all levels of their marketing, including email.

Consumers want to feel like the brand they are shopping with understands their needs and creates products specifically for them.

When you start asking people to subscribe to your list, see if you can get them to tell you the kind of content and offers they want to receive. Because they are able to personalize their experience, they are more likely to open up your emails in the future. In fact, segmenting your lead lists in this way can potentially double your click-through rate.

Ask for Feedback

Asking for feedback from your subscribers is a great way to learn how to improve not just your email campaign, but your business as a whole. Customers are more than happy to tell companies how they feel about a product or brand, one way or the other.

Positive feedback is great because it helps you understand what you’re doing right. As an added benefit, you can ask to use some of the positive feedback on your testimonials page as a way to build more social proof on your website.

Believe it or not, some negative feedback can be more valuable for your strategy than all positive feedback. Imagine if you sent out a feedback email and asked subscribers to tell you how you can improve. If over half said they feel like you send too many emails, you can fine-tune your strategy and try to space out your messages.

Now let’s say half noted that your emails are excellent, but they think your navigation bar on-site is clunky. You can take that information and improve your website based on the feedback you received from your emails.

As a general rule, we suggest sending out feedback emails if someone buys/renews a product as well as 1-2 questionnaires a year for a constant stream of new information.

Split Test Your Campaigns

Split testing, also known as A/B testing, is the process of changing one or more variables within your campaign. The goal is to see if you can elicit a different response from your audience by making these slight changes.

There are several aspects of your email campaign you can test. Not surprisingly, the most common variable is the title of the email. Your title determines if someone will even open the message. If this part of your email doesn’t click with your subscriber, they will never see any of the other content within the message.

You can also change your call to action at the bottom of your marketing emails. Some marketers like changing the color of the box containing the CTA, while others like tinkering with the verbiage. Both aspects can help you generate sales if appropriately implemented. The biggest mistake business owners and marketers make when split testing is they don’t give the test campaign enough time to build meaningful results.

Take your time and experiment with the different email elements at your own pace. You’ll start to learn what your customers like, and the results will show when you review your email analytics.

Never Buy Lead Lists

You should never, under any circumstance, buy lead lists. Much like buying social media likes and engagement, you’re not building a healthy organic customer base. Instead of allowing your business to grow over time with people that are passionate about your products or services, you’re artificially inflating your numbers.

Not only are you artificially inflating your subscribers, but you could also be committing a crime in some countries. In Europe, buying email lists containing people who are not interested in your brand can get you arrested and fined.

Let’s be honest, even if it was legal to buy lists in that circumstance, it’s still wrong morally and makes no business sense. Imagine if someone was actually interested in your product or service before you bought a list that contained their name. Do you think they will appreciate the fact that you bought their name and email from a third party? If they had a chance at becoming customers before this event, you’ve effectively ruined that opportunity.

Buying email lists sounds too good to be true because it is. You will do your business and customers more harm than good by taking part in this tactic.

Analyze Your Results

Finally, make sure you analyze your results using data from your analytics plugin, customer feedback, and current email marketing analytics. It’s vital that you keep an eye on the needs of the people that use your product.

When consumer needs evolve, your business strategy can change with them. Building personalized connections with customers is possible through your analytics. We already mentioned the benefits of analytics as it pertains to split testing and customer feedback, but that’s only the beginning.

There are unlimited possibilities for growth when you compile information from all of these sources at once. The key is to find patterns in this data and turn it into actionable marketing for your business.

As your business grows, you’ll start to see new customers come to your website, and thus new subscribers joining your email list. With practice, you can use these tips to fine-tune your email marketing strategy and turn those first-time visitors into lifelong customers.

Syed Balkhi
Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.

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