Social media has taken the world by storm, and most businesses concentrate their marketing efforts around it.
It’s easy to think that email is outdated or even dead.
Nothing can be further from the truth. This form of communication, though archaic, is alive and kicking.
As a matter of fact, 66% of consumers state that they’ve bought something from a marketing campaign they received via email.
On the other end of the spectrum, only 20% have bought something from a Facebook marketing campaign, while only a measly 6% have done so through a Twitter promotion.
As an African SME, you need technology that’s on your side. And email is one of them.
So join me as I reveal the incredible reasons explaining why email marketing is essential to your small business.
1. Â Its power to nurture relationships with your subscribers
Email is a platform you can use to educate your subscriber about your brand. For example, you can:
- Introduce the core mission and vision of your brand to your subscriber.
- Explain why your subscriber should care about your SME.
- Demonstrate your business’ unique selling proposition, or in other words, what makes your brand uniquely different from your competitors.
- Illustrate how the main product/service your business offers can dramatically improve the life of your subscriber.
Through email marketing, you warm up your subscribers to become potential customers, and in the process, transform some of them to become lifelong ones.
Instead of explaining everything about your start-up on your website’s homepage (which can be terribly confusing), use a staggered email series to promote your brand.
But hey, I don’t see how I can build a relationship with my subscribers?
I hear you. That’s why I’ll demonstrate a few examples your start-up could emulate.
You could:
- Ask for direct feedback once a customer buys your product/service.
- Educate your subscribers about the benefits of using your product.
- Showcase several case-studies of your previous customers and how your service improved their lives.
- Offer bonuses or surprise gifts to your subscribers simply because they took the initiative of joining your start-up’s mailing list.
There are limitless ways of fostering the relationship between your brand and subscribers through email marketing.
Only you can find out what resonates with your clients.
2. Â It grows your brand in a more humane way
Email marketing engages the principal of reciprocity.
How?
Here’s the question a potential subscriber asks him/herself all the time:
What do I get in return after joining your mailing list?
Is it:
- Information?
- A free bonus, e.g, a book, report, etc?
- A free trial to your service?
You need to answer that question upfront. You have to state clearly what your SME is offering in exchange for your prospect’s email address.
In the email marketing universe, that free thing you’re offering in exchange for an email address is called a lead magnet.
A magnet is by nature attractive, and any iron filing nearby can’t escape its attraction. Your lead magnet follows the same nature; it has to be attention-grabbing.
It should also be relevant, actionable and easy enough to be rapidly implemented.
A lead, on the other hand, is your potential subscriber.
On your start-up’s website, here are a few lead magnet examples you can use to grow your brand in a more humane way:
- A real-estate start-up: Join {start-up name} mailing list, and get weekly, value packed real-estate investment advice delivered straight to your inbox.
- A financial advice SME: Download the {report’s name}, showing you how to make your hard-earned money work for you.
- A software development start-up: Get the {web-design online course’s name}, showing you how to code a website with minimal effort.
- Etc.
The only way a potential lead can get your lead magnet is by submitting their email address (even their name).
From then on, you nurture him/her with a welcome email sequence introducing your brand, and what your start-up can do to improve his/her life.
If the subscriber doesn’t feel your start-up is what he/she was looking for, they can always unsubscribe.
Most email marketing providers provide you an unsubscribe link at the footer of every email you send.
It’s painful seeing them leave, but it’s their choice, not yours.
However, it’s comforting to know that the subscriber rate is always higher than the unsubscribe rate.
This is a metric you can use to measure your start-up’s progress.
3. Â Its incredible return of time investment
There is a brilliant little-known piece of technology that most email marketing platforms provide; the auto-responder function.
Let’s say you are an SME specializing in leather shoes.
Let’s also assume that you’ve setup a welcome email sequence that introduces your organization to your subscribers, and you educate them how your business can help them choose the best footwear for the work place.
It could take you a week to write those welcome emails, but here’s the fun part.
If I join your mailing list tomorrow, I’ll get those same emails (maybe with slight variations) as someone who’ll join your list in 2020, or even in vision 2030!
That’s absolutely phenomenal!
You set up an email sequence once, and the auto-responder function sends your emails infinitely (or up until the time you’d like to change a thing or two).
Of course, the auto-responder doesn’t only work for a welcome sequence. You can use it for a number of things, like:
- Setting up a sales sequence for your product/service {more on this in point #5}.
- Setting up a newsletter sequence that promotes the content on your SME’s blog on a weekly basis.
- Forming a survey sequence asking for feedback from your subscribers, etc.
This is automation on a whole different level. Just write those emails, and the auto-responder function will take care of the rest.
4.  It’s affordable for most SME’s
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing channels your SME can use.
For example:
- AWeber charges $19/month (approx. Kshs 1900) to send emails to 500 subscribers.
- ConvertKit charges $29/month (approx. Kshs 1900) for 1,000 subscribers.
- ActiveCampaign charges $29/month (approx. Kshs 2900) for 1,000 subscribers.
- GetResponse charges $15/month (approx. Kshs 1500) for 1,000 subscribers.
As you can see, email marketing is affordable. Coupled with advanced features such as automation, tagging and segmentation, you realize that the monetary investment is worth it.
I’ve already explained what automation is and I bet you’re wondering what tagging and segmentation are. Well, here are their brief definitions, using examples of course.
Tagging: This is where you give a subscriber a unique name based on how he/she interacts with your emails.
For example, you can add tag ‘customer’ when they buy a product/service from you. This removes them from later sales pitches of your product/service.
Segmentation: To personalize your emails further, you can send highly relevant and actionable information to each subscriber based on the lead magnet they got, or the form he/she subscribed to.
For example, your start-up offers insurance services. You can send personal insurance tips to Person A because he downloaded the ‘personal insurance booklet’ while Person B gets car insurance advice because he downloaded the ‘car insurance booklet.’
Choose the email marketing platform that’s right for your business. Look at the features it provides and see if they’re important to your start-up.
(Note: If you’d like to know the platform I use, get the free handbook linked at my author bio. It’s particularly suited for SME’s that employ a heavy content marketing strategy. In other words, blogging.)
5. Â Email Marketing helps you automate your sales
Let’s say your SME makes high-end designer bags.
You’ve created an inviting welcome-email-sequence that has educated your subscribers about your brand.
But your start-up is a business. You’d like to sell your bags to your subscribers.
Enter an email-sales-sequence.
This sequence is there to promote your bags. It is the sequence that makes you look ‘salesy’.
That’s why it should always come after the welcome-email-sequence. Your welcome sequence should take a week or two to inform your subscriber about your start-up.
Your sales email sequence can therefore run on the 3rd or 4th week of the month. This means you can sell your bags on a monthly basis.
Just set up an email-sales-sequence for your start-up, and let the auto-responder do its job.
6. Â It turbo-boosts your content marketing
If your start-up publishes blog posts frequently, your older posts, will sooner or later be forgotten.
For example, if your blog has 20 pages, do you think a new visitor will go to page 13, and read every post on that page?
I’m guessing no is the answer, right?
That’s why every SME that blogs should use a newsletter sequence that promotes its blog posts every week to its subscribers.
That way, your subscribers can read your newest posts, your oldest posts or posts that explain a particular problem they have.
And the best part, you can always ask your subscribers to share your posts.
Conclusion
Email marketing is powerful. You engage with your subscribers and potential clients in a personal way.
You can use their names or the 2nd person (you), to inform, educate and even empower them using your emails.
If your SME is missing out on email marketing, start by looking for the platform that’s relevant for your business.
You’ll soon discover how precious of a gem email marketing is.
About the Author:
Nicholas Muema is the founder of Blogger’s Pursuit. If you’d like to know the email marketing platform he uses, get his blogging tools handbook, which in addition, shows you the tech stuff you need to set up the dream blog of your business.