10 Best Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Small businesses have to juggle a lot when starting up. The administrative tasks only seemingly get more daunting as time passes, requiring you to take online courses or pay for expert help to find your footing. Thankfully, you can save time in digital marketing efforts by discovering the best email marketing tips that level up any campaign. These actions will refine every email, promising higher open rates from your customers.

1. Perfect Your Subject Lines

The best subject lines are short, sweet and to the point. They must also have some expressiveness that sets your email apart from the flood of other emails in a generic inbox. Make sure you limit punctuation to prevent it from looking spammy. The same goes for emojis — these can resemble scam messages if you are not careful. Finally, if you can, use a template to include the receiver’s name to make it feel more customized.

Example: [Name], summer feels too short. Find fun in the sun with these deals. 🌊

2. Segment Your Email List

Every subscriber is signing up to your list for different reasons. They have various interests, demographics, and purchasing values. Create separate lists for each customer segment you have. This will increase the chances of people opening the email because it appeals to their specific behaviors. 

You can measure engagement with each segment, refining them as you learn more niche information about the customer groups. Some tools even automate these processes to make curation simpler.

Example: Have four separate email groups for customers who spend high amounts on lifestyle products, low amounts periodically, those who only shop with coupons, and local shoppers.

3. Optimize Send Times

Many email optimization platforms have embedded tools to tell senders when and where receivers open their emails. Statistically, the morning and afternoon are the best, but it depends on your company’s vertical. Gamers may be more likely to stay up late, while skin care experts may check emails during their morning routine. Typically, you’ll want to avoid late nights and weekends when people are sleeping or busy. Use this data to curate a schedule.

4. Focus on Mobile Optimization

Most emails are opened on mobile devices, which will increase as phones become more powerful. Email templates must be responsive and adapted to a phone screen. They should not feel scrunched, and every image and text box should be appropriately sized. People who see strangely formatted emails on their phone will lose trust in the sender. Test emails across screen sizes and device types to ensure everything is friendly to the eyes and hands.

5. Personalize Your Content

As previously mentioned, an email with the customer’s name makes it feel more custom. There are other ways to personalize emails to make them more clickable. Send location-based deals for storefronts near them using customer data. Send content based on previous interactions. These dynamic formats make emails feel more relevant to readers.

Example: If a customer has taken the majority of polls or quizzes you have sent out, continue sending them emails with this kind of content to increase the chance of engagement.

6. Maintain List Hygiene

Bigger is not always better when it comes to an email list. One of the best email marketing tips small businesses can employ is culling users occasionally. There are several beneficial reasons why you would want to spend time doing this, or issuing an automation to undertake this task.

First, it makes metrics more accurate. If a subscriber has been inactive for over a year, they are only skewing the results of click-through rates. Defunct or closed email accounts boost bounce rates, which you want to keep as low as possible. Marketers can always try to remarket inactive subscribers before deletion, but this should not take up too much of the team’s efforts, especially for small staff bases.

The most important benefit of maintaining the list is knowing who your customers are. Emails are typically seen as a vehicle for the customer to interact with the business, but the opposite is equally, if not more, important. Companies can better identify customer names and interests if the list is made of active individuals and return customers.

7. Create Compelling CTAs

Every good email has a call-to-action in it. These can revolve around current marketing goals, such as increasing sales or gaining followers on a social media account. CTAs come in various forms, whether a simple statement or a large, colorful button. They should be above the fold to make sure people see them. It might feel like shameless promotion, but putting a CTA at the bottom in a smaller font does not help anyone. Action-based language is the most appealing, especially if you heighten urgency with exclusivity.

Example: If you share this coupon with a friend, you’ll get an exclusive treat on your next order that isn’t available in store! Share now.

8. Track Key Metrics

The value of email marketing metrics comes and goes based on trends. However, tracking as many as possible at the beginning can help you obtain literacy about your audience. You can’t set email marketing goals if you don’t know the baseline. Here are some of the most important things to observe throughout your campaigns:

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Conversions
• Unsubscribe rates
• Bounces

9. Automate Key Campaigns

You don’t want to dedicate one of your few staff members to constantly checking emails. This is why many services have automations. They can send deals to people on their birthdays, send surveys after a purchase, or submit a series of welcome emails to a new subscriber. If you want your efforts to succeed, delegate some tedious tasks to automation.

10. Provide Value First

People sign up for email lists because they see value in them. It could be for educational reasons, or they simply want heads-up notifications about sales and deals. Discover what your customers find value in. These insights help you format your emails in the most impactful ways. Then, customers can see you as a value-first tool instead of a pushy salesperson. 

Spend time curating content to these interests. It may require some market research, but it is easily the best email marketing tip for people who want to start their campaigns on a good foot.

The Best Email Marketing Tips for All Skill Levels

The best practices for digital marketing campaigns are always changing, but these are the most persistent staples anyone can try. Implement one at a time to execute gradual implementation and measure the impacts of each strategy. Eventually, you will have incorporated tons of the top techniques experts use to strengthen your business.