Life as a business owner, or solopreneur, is hard work. Being a small business owner may mean you’re the president, main sales leader, operations manager, and accountant. That’s a lot of hats to wear. Each role has several tasks to perform. For marketing, tasks can include content marketing, SEO, email marketing, social media marketing, and more. It’s a lot to do and someone’s got to do it.
With an average ROI of $32 for every dollar invested (DMA 2018), email delivers the highest ROI of all marketing channels. Here are three things you can do to improve your email marketing program. Use these tips, and you’ll reduce your time on email marketing while maximizing your ROI.
1. Find the Right Email Marketing Service
Finding an email marketing service for your needs is easy. Choosing from a wide variety of solutions isn’t. 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.
Consider factors like deliverability, reliability, and usability as non-negotiable. You have to decide which of the other features are must-haves and nice-to-haves.
The best email marketing tools provide free plans or trials, so experiment with different platforms. Some email marketing platforms require basic coding. Platforms like Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign use drag-and-drop editors.
2. Get Started With Email Automation
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 on-board or upsell them. Content in those emails can insert text or images based on a user’s purchases.
- Automation can help you unlock greater ROI in two ways:
- Less time spent on email increases your capacity to get more done (invaluable benefit for busy small business owners).
Creating more compelling experiences for your contacts results in higher engagement and customer conversions. Setting up your automations can take a bit of time, but once they’re up and rolling, you’ll reap the rewards. As your offering changes, make sure to update your automations.
3. Consider Hiring Help
Sometimes, you can’t do it all by yourself. It can be intimidating to delegate, but it can be empowering.
First, do the math. Think about how much your time is worth. If it takes you 20 hours to do what a professional could do in 10 hours, why not hire the help so you can spend your time elsewhere?
As a small business owner, you’re focused on the big picture of owning and growing your business. It makes sense to use employees or freelancers for executing some of the minutiae.
You can find top-notch email designers and marketers on freelance sites like Upwork. You can also enlist the help of professional services to level-up your email program. Our firm is always available to take your email marketing to new heights. Whether you need help with email best practices or improving your program’s results, always consider help.
