If you are a small
business owner or considering starting a small
business e-mail marketing is an effective and
affordable means for building your business. In
this day and age most everyone in business has an
e-mail account and you can use this fact to
increase your sales. In very basic terms, e-mail
or electronic mail marketing is using the
internet and e-mail to promote your business.
There is a long list of reasons why a small
business should use e-mailing marketing for their
small business. E-mail marketing gives you a
continuing way to stay in touch with your
customers, it’s inexpensive, and it can
greatly increase your business sales.
If that’s not enough to convince you that
e-mail marketing is a great opportunity for your
small business this form of marketing also gives
you a list of customers you can market to
repeatedly and helps to develop yourself as an
expert in your area of business.
With well over 200 million people in North
America using the internet it’s easy to
understand how your small business can benefit
from using e-mail marketing. And statistics show
this number is growing rapidly. The most common
reason people use the internet is for e-mail
– why not take advantage of this fact and
advertise your business to these millions.
By using e-mail marketing to its fullest
potential you as a small business owner have a
means of keeping in regular contact with
customers; past, current, and future. That is a
triple whammy for possible sales from one effort
and the simple fact is the more people who see
your business or product the more sales you will
have.
Let’s face it; most small business owners
don’t have a large advertising budget or a
huge staff to support advertising campaigns. By
using e-mail marketing you can promote your
business with next to no staff involvement (or
none if you do it yourself) and the expense can
be for as little as nothing at all. E-mail
marketing for a small business can be simple
enough that the average person can manage it.
One of the greatest features of using e-mail
marketing for the small business is the
possibility to get your business name in the
public eye and promote to possible customers who
may otherwise never know they want or need your
service until it’s in front of them.
Remember with e-mail marketing you have the
opportunity to connect with millions of people
and each one of them is a potential customer.
Probably the most difficult part of e-mail
marketing for the small business owner is having
something to offer potential customers. You will
want/need information you can share that will be
of some interest to those customers. You are a
business owner and all you need to do is look
into your business experience to find this
information. This could be information on new
product lines, new ways of doing business, or
even something as simple as your own experience
as a small business owner.
Another benefit of e-mail marketing is the simple
truth that it is far more effective than
traditional means of advertising. We’ve all
been there, we get those brightly colored
advertisements in the snail mail (traditional
postal service) that someone has spent a pretty
penny on having designed and produced. What do we
do with them? The majority go in the trash
without a second glance. With effective e-mail
marketing the receiver of your e-mail message is
going to read it if just to see what this is or
what you have to offer.
If all of this isn’t enough to convince you
that e-mail marketing can be a great asset for
your small how about this; you can also track the
effectiveness of your e-mail marketing. You
can’t do that with most other forms of
advertising unless you ask your customers
‘how did you find us’. Chances are most
are going to say ‘I’m not sure’.
With e-mail marketing you can track information
such as who is reading your e-mails, if they
visited your web site, even if they became a
customer.
Obviously there are many advantages to using
e-mail marketing. With e-mail marketing you
don’t have to be a huge corporation or spend
an enormous amount of money advertising. Add to
that the simple fact that any business no matter
what your product or service can use e-mail
marketing.
Don’t limit your possibilities for promoting
your business. Whether you own the local beauty
shop or the home town brick company you can take
advantage of e-mail marketing to build your
business.
Faith Wright-Draper (aka
byfaithonly) has been writing for over 40
years as a journalist, ghostwriter, and
freelancer. She currently writes for
several blogs, freelances, and writes on
her own website www.byfaithonly.com