Size doesn’t matter.  Whether you’re an SME, a small-growing business or just one man and his dog, we understand that the thought of using any online marketing activities, let alone email marketing might be a daunting one.  You may have concerns about a lack of email addresses or on how to create a professional looking email.  That’s where Suite26 can help.

Here are 5 simple steps to you help build your email list, engage with your customers and follow up on your campaign results.

1. List building by collecting email addresses

The quickest and most effective way of collecting valid email addresses from customers who are interested in your products or services is to provide an email opt-in subscribe form on your website so that customers can sign-up to receive your newsletters or promotional offers.  The other way is to get your employees to actively ask customers for their email addresses at every point of contact, whether it’s by phone, face-to-face or online.

2. Understand your customers and carefully plan your email messages

First you need to understand your customer base and consider how they can benefit from X, Y or Z news or offers. What do they see as value?  If you plan to send a regular email newsletter, make sure it’s newsworthy and of interest to the reader.  Separate your customers into specific groups depending on their interests, location, purchasing amounts and more.  Then send targeted emails that specifically relate to their needs and interests.  Also consider the best day(s) and time(s) to send your emails, giving them the best chance of being read.

3. Creating your email template

Create an email campaign that will grab the readers' attention, engage them and get them to respond e.g. sign-up, contribute, trial or buy.  Use a professional looking, properly designed HTML email template as it can be the difference between inbox or junk folder delivery.  Having a custom-built email template designed for you can give your messages a professional look and feel each time you send, helping your customers to instantly recognise your brand and help increase traffic straight to your website.

4. Write content that will engage customers

When it comes to writing your content remember these key points:

• Keep it simple – both your subject line and your message

• Decide what the objective is for the email - what do you want the customer to do next?

• Use clear, well placed call-to-action buttons or words that will direct recipients through to a specific webpage

• Carefully consider your opening paragraph as this is what will initially be seen by customers in their email program’s preview panel.  You must be able to grab their attention in a few seconds and make them want to open it and read on.  Personalising the email with the recipient’s name can help achieve this.

• Always use fresh and interesting new content on each and every send

• Make sure there’s good ratio between text and images.  Too many images and not enough text can make the email look like spam to Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo email filters

5. Understand your results and what to do next

Unlike other marketing activities, email marketing provides results and a return on your investment.  After sending your campaign you’ll immediately receive stats showing who’s opened your email, who’s clicked through to your website and much more.  You’ll then be able to determine which customers are interested by how many times they’ve read your email and exactly how interested they are by the number of times they’ve clicked, and what links they’ve clicked on.  With this information you can plan to follow up with another email specifically targeting these interested customers.

Have You Started Email Marketing Yet?

So if you’re a small business still unsure whether to start using email marketing, simply follow the steps above and you'll have no problems at all.  With a little effort at the beginning, you’ll soon see that email marketing works, not to mention it has one of the best Return-On-Investments of all marketing activities.  So don’t be put off, give us call on 0845 313 0912 and we’re happily have a chat about your requirements.  We’re here to help you get your email marketing underway.

However tempting it may seem, just don't go there. We're not just talking here about the dodgy providers who offer millions of addresses for peanuts, but the more professional looking ones who will provide you with a segmented, opt-in list from people who have agreed to receive "3rd party" marketing about your chosen subject.

The main problem here is that the recipients on these lists will not have the slightest clue who you are. No matter what permission they gave to receive "3rd party" mailings they have not given you their permission to email them. Sending mail to these people will have many of them hitting the Report Spam button in their email client and if too many do that your domain is going to end up on spam blacklists. Can you afford for your brand to become blacklisted and have your reputation tarnished?

The next problem is you have no idea when and where the address was collected - it could have been added to the list years ago and may no longer even be in use. Sending email to non-existent or dead addresses will also count against you and you could again end up on one of those blacklists. What's more, if you receive a complaint and are asked to prove where you got the address, which site they opted in on along with date/time/IP address - could you provide that information?

Then you run into the relevancy issue. The recipients who do actually receive your mail, don't report you for spamming and open it up may not even find the content relevant to them (after all they have no idea who you are) - they'll just delete it.

So, you spent all that money on buying/renting a list then money on sending it out only to find most did not arrive, the ones that did weren't opened, you've got a ton of spam complaints and your domain is on a number of blacklists - now it doesn't seem like such a tempting idea after all!

Oh and finally using a purchased/rented list will break the Ts and Cs and anti-spam policies of almost any ESP - us included. So just don't bother - we can see purchased lists a mile off.