Getting Started With Email Marketing as a Small Business
Download a PDF version of this graphic here.
Thinking about email marketing? Here’s what you need to do to get started:
- Brainstorm content.
- Think about the goals you want to achieve with email marketing and what type of content will help you achieve them.
- Build an audience.
- Figure out who you want to send your content to and get emails to put on your mailing list. Put a signup form on your website and social media channels and/or use a list of previous customers. NEVER buy third party email lists.
- Segment your audience.
- Make sure the content you want to send makes sense to the intended audience. Seperate your audience into different groups and send unique content dependent on behavior and demographics.
- Set a frequency.
- Commit to an email schedule that is realistic for your team and effective for your audience. It’s important to be consistent, even if you can only do the minimum of once a month!
- Choose an email marketing service.
- There are a variety of email marketing services (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, etc. ) you can use. Research and see which one meets your needs and your budget.
- Write content.
- Write what you brainstormed keeping in mind the audience you want to target and the goals you’ve set. Keep emails short enough that you get your message across and users will want to read it.
- Design an email template.
- Make sure that your email is clean, readable, and represents your business. Most email services have drag and drop editors, so no graphic design knowledge is needed!
- Put it all together and send!
- After all of the hard work you’ve put into research and planning, you’re ready to put everything together and send it off into the world.
- Analyze results, tweak, repeat.
- See how your email did and tweak how your future emails will be done. You’re not always going to get it right the first time, but you can always change and try again.