Email marketing campaigns can make a substantial difference for small businesses in terms of website traffic and online sales. However, many marketing emails are superficially skimmed over and then deleted. This doesn’t mean your email marketing efforts are doomed to fail. Fortunately, following a few simple tips can help you increase the conversion rate and engagement associated with your small business’s email campaigns.

Short and Sweet

Bombarded by many promotional emails on a daily basis, the average would-be customer allows a very brief window of attention for each one. Lengthy paragraphs and delayed leads will not make the cut. Take advantage of the first few seconds a potential customer gives your email by getting to the point right away. The basic journalism technique of providing the main kernel of information at the top applies to small business email marketing as well. If you present a streamlined email with short, clean paragraphs and your purpose clearly presented upfront, there’s a much better chance potential customers will give your message a chance.

Personalize

To the greatest extent possible, given budgeting and time considerations, custom tailor your messages to their recipients. This can involve relatively simple segmenting techniques such as customizing the message based on whether the recipient is a current customer or prospect. You can also customize based of geographical area and other broad segment factors. Any degree to which you can accurately personalize your message will increase the likelihood that the recipient will indeed be interested in what you’re saying. Another helpful personalization tip? Address the customer by name.

Content Matters

While it’s true that advertising significant savings on items or services the customer already uses is a great way to drive engagement, you don’t have to go this route every time. In fact, it may help in some cases to focus on information instead. Based on your particular business realm, you might send out the occasional email with fun facts, a new recipe, a customer success story, or interesting background information. As with all other strategies, your email marketing tactics will impact the reputation of your small business. If you build up an image as a company that sends useful, original content worth reading, customers are more likely to open and take a good look at all subsequent emails, thus giving you a better chance of having sales emails adequately considered.

Call to Action

Always include some form of a clear call to action. Naturally this applies when you’re encouraging customers to click on a sales banner, but it can also apply if you want to direct them to your website to read more of an article post. If you’ve sent an email containing interesting information regarding a product or service, make sure to include a call for the customer to share the information via email or social media.

Advance Funds Network helps small businesses reach their next goals, whether that involves expanding customer engagement or developing a new product line.