Owning and operating a business is hard work. If you're a small business owner, you're likely the CEO, recruiter, sales and operations manager, accountant, marketer, and who knows what else. That's a lot of hats to wear.
Not that we don't like hats, but with your marketing duties alone, you have:
Since email boasts the highest ROI of all marketing channels (with an average of $42 for every dollar invested), we decided to focus on improving your email marketing program (plus, email is kinda our thing).
We want to help you get the biggest bang for your buck. To help streamline your small business's email marketing, we've compiled 6 quick-and-easy tips. Use these tips, and you'll minimize your time on email marketing while maximizing your ROI. Win-win.
At the heart of it, most email marketing software solutions perform the same function—sending emails to your recipients. But there's more you need to consider: deliverability, reliability, scalability, pricing, analytics, integrations, list management, ease-of-use, automation, segmentation, A/B testing, etc.
Some of these factors (like deliverability, reliability, and usability) are non-negotiables, but you'll have to decide for yourself what other features are need-to-haves and nice-to-haves.
The best email marketing tools provide free plans or trials, so experiment with the different platforms. Some email marketing platforms require basic coding, and others use drag-and-drop editors—at Twilio SendGrid, we empower you to use both.
Building relationships with your email recipients is essential, but it's tedious work. Email marketing automation empowers you to drive conversions at scale without consuming too much of your time.
With email automation, you can set up workflows that automatically send emails to your recipients based on their behavior. For example, when a new user purchases your product, you can send an automated series of emails over the next few weeks or months to onboard or upsell them.
We're all about speed and efficiency, so we compiled our favorite easy-to-use free design tools here. Use these tools to quickly create the visual content you need to build fantastic email campaigns.
Start clean, stay clean. Black hat email tactics may "work" in the short-term, but they'll end up causing you a mountain of headaches and hours of cleaning up down the road.
Globally, 15% of emails never make it to the inbox. No matter how much time you spend designing high-quality email campaigns and automations, if your deliverability rates plummet, nobody will see those emails.
It's like cleaning your house. It may only take a few minutes a day, but if you neglect it, it’ll take hours later…and might still smell a little bit.
To ensure you're up-to-date on all the best practices, take a peek at our 2019 Email Deliverability Guide. It's chock full of sending advice, reputation management tips, and pitfalls to avoid.
When performance is measured, performance improves. Boost your email campaigns by gauging engagement with a few regular measurements. You'll be surprised how focusing on the right metrics can magically up-level your email list's health.
You don't need to become an analytics wizard or data scientist—just take time at the end of the month to review your past campaigns. What went well? What didn't?
Make sure to analyze what went well, too. Maybe an email you sent on a Thursday morning had super-high open rates—try sending an email at the same time again to find a trend.
You can only make progress by reviewing the past. Carve out a regular time to review your email stats, and then target areas for improvement.
Sometimes, you just can't do it all by yourself. It can be intimidating to delegate, but it can be incredibly empowering.
First, think about how much your time is worth. If it takes you 20 hours to do what a professional could do (probably better) in 10 hours, why not hire the help so you can spend your time elsewhere?
You can find top-notch email designers and marketers on freelance sites like Upwork. You can also enlist the help of professional services to up-level your email program. At Twilio SendGrid, we have a team of email experts ready to take your email marketing to new heights. Whether you need help with email best practices or improving your program's results, there are Expert Services available.
It's as simple as that. With just a few tools and tips, you can dramatically decrease the time you spend on email marketing campaigns while magnifying your results.
Don't make being a small business owner more challenging (as if it wasn't hard enough already). Give these tips a try and see how much time and money you save.
