You’re a small business owner, we’re a marketing agency. You don’t need us to tell you that running a small business can be challenging. We bet you’re working on a detailed plan for creating a 26-hour day right about now, yeah? While we might not need to tell you it can be challenging, we’re here to offer a gentle reminder that it can also be rewarding.
Being a small business owner means having the freedom to make your own decisions, take creative risks with your products or services, and tinker around with marketing tools and strategies that might work for you.
One of the best tools in any small business owner’s handy toolkit is an email newsletter—it’s easy to create and manage once you get started and it provides an effective way to stay connected with your customers each little step of the way.
What's an Email Newsletter?
Unless you’ve been living amongst Barney Rubble for the past few decades, you probably already know the answer to this at least on a basic level. Just in case we do have a few readers that fit that mold, here’s an explanation:
An email newsletter is a type of email that businesses and organizations send to their subscribers. It’s a way to keep people informed about new products, services, promotions, or other news related to the business. Email newsletters can be sent on a regular basis (such as weekly or monthly) or they can be sent out when there is something newsworthy to share. They can include text, images, videos, and links to other content.
In short, an email newsletter is news about your business sent to a subscriber’s email inbox. Pretty simple.
But what exactly are the benefits?
The 4 Benefits of an Email Newsletter
The benefits of your small business creating an email newsletter are aplenty and include increased customer engagement, a cost-effective marketing strategy, increased website traffic, and another way to track and measure success.
1. Increased customer engagement
As mentioned above, an email newsletter allows your small business to stay in touch with your customers and keep them informed about new products, services, promotions, and other news related to your business.
Time, resources, and hands are limited in the small business world and an email newsletter offers the ability to stay connected with your customers in a simple, consistent way. When your customers begin to see your name pop up in their email inbox on a regular basis, they’ll start to keep you top-of-mind when they’re looking for a product they know you sell.
2. Cost-effective marketing strategy
Email newsletters are a cost-effective way to reach your customers and promote your business. They are much cheaper than traditional advertising methods like print ads that run, on average, for $250 for a small ad for one issue of a paper that may or may not catch enough eyes to make a difference.
Email newsletters, on the other hand, only go out to people who have subscribed so you know they’re already interested, and they’re much cheaper. Some platforms, like Mailchimp, even offer completely free memberships if your needs fit certain guidelines.
3. Increased Web Traffic
A good email newsletter includes links to your website or blog, which can help drive traffic to your site and increase your search engine rankings.
As the old adage goes, “Give a human a web address and they’ll ignore it; give a human a web address hyperlinked in text and they can’t stop clicking.”
Okay, there’s no old adage that says that, however, we as human beings know we can’t pass up a good hyperlink if prompted correctly. And that’s the key – email newsletters prompt customers to return to a website. How many times do you think your customers think about your business on a given day? Getting an email newsletter in their inbox is your best shot at making sure that number is at least “1”.
4. Ability to Track and Measure Success
Email marketing platforms provide detailed analytics that allow you to track the success of your email campaigns. There is hardly anything in the world these days that wouldn’t improve if given data about their performance and your business is no exception.
The better your email newsletters do, the better your business does and there are tools on the newsletter platforms (not to mention tons of resources on YouTube) that directly guide you on how to improve what you’re sending out.
A Strategy You Can't Pass Up
To wrap this up, creating an email newsletter can be extremely beneficial to your small business. Not only will it help engage with current customers, but potentially reach even more people who are interested in what you have to offer in a cost effective way.
So, if you’re looking for a great way to deliver valuable information and grow your business at the same time, an email newsletter may be just what you need.
Ready to get started? Stay tuned for our next blog on how to create a successful email newsletter! We guarantee you’ll begin to see effective campaigns that will have people clicking and signing up in no time.