Email marketing is the secret weapon that small businesses need to succeed.

photo credit: Ketut Subiyanto / Pexels

When you’re running a small business, everything you do has a direct influence on your bottom line. That’s why it’s important that you spend your time wisely and where it can make the biggest impact.

If you’re looking for ways to prioritize how and when you should communicate with your customer — look no further than email marketing.

Email is a great way to reach your customers. Not only is it cost-effective, but many customers want to hear from the companies they love through email. In fact, 28% of customers actually like to receive promotional emails from companies.

While it may take some time to find the perfect timing or combination of email tactics, you’ll find it’s easier than you think. With the help of things like list segmentation, Gmail mass mail merge technology, and improved personalization — email marketing can be the most effective marketing tool you have.

In this article, we’ll take a look at four ways that email marketing can help benefit your small business.

Here’s a sneak peek at the email marketing benefits we’ll cover:

• Build brand awareness
• See a high return on investment
• Improve customer relationships
• Increase website traffic

1. You’ll Build Brand Awareness

Email marketing is a great way to build brand awareness. From incorporating consistent brand elements such a design, tone and voice, and copy your customers can start to recognize and identify your brand.

Things to incorporate into your emails to build brand awareness:

• Use a template that is similar for each email to incorporate consistency
• Include visual elements that are used across all of your marketing platforms
• Incorporate your branding color pallet
• Use similar voice, tone, and copy language across all of your platforms

The more you communicate with your customers, the more familiar they will get with your branding. And over time they will quickly be able to associate your branding elements with your company.

It’s the same idea as if you see the McDonald’s logo or red and yellow color combination, even without the company know, you know exactly what company the message is associated with.

While you may not reach the brand awareness levels of McDonald’s or other major brands, email is a great place to help your customers to start to recognize your brand.

2. You’ll Get an Impressive Return on Investment

If you’re looking for a cost-effective solution that will provide you with an impressive return on investment — look no further. That’s because emails generate $38 for every $1 spent. Let that sink in.

That means that if you spend $100 to create an email, you should expect to see a return on investment of $3,800. That’s a huge return based on the amount of time and money you put in. That’s why email marketing is such a great option for small businesses that need to make the most out of every transaction.

You may be wondering why email has such a higher return on investment than many other platforms. Well, there are multiple reasons for this. Let’s take a look at a few :

• People are checking their emails all the time, especially now that mobile devices are so widely used
• Email can offer customers a more personalized experience, and it’s been proven that personalization helps increase engagement and sales
• It’s cost-effective and you can send one email to hundreds, even thousands of contacts all at once

Knowing that email is one of the most preferred methods of communication among your customers and the high return on investment that comes with it — investing in email marketing should be a no brainer for small businesses.

Build a better relationship and benefit from a more loyal customer base. You’ll find that spending time on these relationships is more beneficial and cost-effective than seeking new customers.

3. You’ll Improve Customer Relationships

When you consider that 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers, improving your customer relationships should be a top priority.

Email marketing is a great way to build relationships and nurture leads into loyal, repeat customers. Here are a few examples of how you can use email to turn a new subscriber into a loyal customer.

• Send welcome emails to engage with new subscribers and let them know what to expect from your brand
• Segment your subscriber list to ensure you’re sending your customers the most relevant content
• Provide coupons and discounts for customers who make frequent purchases and reward them for their loyalty

Email is a great avenue to communicate with your customers more frequently and on a much more personal level. The good news is that improving customer relationships doesn’t have to be a difficult task.

In fact, with the ability to send mass emails through your current Gmail account, it can be easier than ever. Simply mail merge your contact lists, identify the properties that apply to your message, and hit send.

With the ability to create emails to larger audiences in a quick and efficient manner, improving your customer relationships is easier than you’ve ever imagined.

Your end goal is to get more customers to your website to make a purchase. Email marketing is a great traffic driver to send people to the products they are most interested in.

4. You’ll Increase Website Traffic

If you’re looking to improve marketing campaign performance or drive more traffic to your website, email marketing is a great option.

With a clear call to action, you can easily increase traffic to your website. Emails are designed to be quick notifications to entice customers to click and learn more. Someone isn’t going to open an email and make a purchase right from their inbox, they are going to click through to your site to browse products.

That means your emails need to provide customer value and be enticing enough for them to want to click to learn more. The right call to action will help you drive traffic to your site and see an increase in sales in the process.

Make the Most Out of Every Message

As a small business, you need to make the most out of the time you spend. With the help of email marketing, you can start to build brand awareness, increase website traffic, and quickly see an impressive return on investment.

If you have to choose one marketing tactic to help take your business to the next level, you’ll definitely want to consider the power of email.