Email Marketing Isn’t Dead: Optimize it for Your Business

Many small business owners have convinced themselves that email marketing is dead. They don’t want to direct any marketing resources or budget into this activity. In my professional opinion, this is a mistake.

I do understand why business owners think email marketing can’t be effective for their business. They usually come to this conclusion for one or all of the following reasons:

1. My email list is too small, and I don’t know how to build it.

2. As a consumer, I hate getting so many marketing emails, so I don’t want to be part of the noise.

3. I have never had someone call me to initiate a sale because they got my email.

The truth is that these reasons for avoiding email marketing are actually evidence that previous efforts weren’t backed by the right strategy. Email marketing, when done for the right reasons and from the right strategy for your business, can be one of the most personalized and powerful marketing tools for your business. 

Let’s flip these three reasons for avoiding email marketing into leveraging it for your unique message.

Target the Right People for Your Email List of Any Size

A small email list is not a problem. While you certainly should have the goal of building your list, growing it organically is always the way to go. You may receive offers to purchase email lists, but I strongly recommend staying far away from these schemes. Purchasing someone’s information is not a good practice, and it might even be illegal in some circumstances.

Email marketing is not most effective as a cold sales practice. Rather, it is a tool for communicating with people who are already interested in hearing from you. Your email audience should be made up of individuals who want to connect and who find your business relevant to their needs.

Remember, you will be putting effort into planning your email topics and writing the content. If you have a curated email list, it contains the most likely recipients who will look for, open, and read your emails. 

How do you build this targeted list? Before you take even the first step, make sure you know exactly who you want to be on it. This starts with building your persona profile. Identify your ideal client and how you serve them with your business. 

When you know who you are looking for, the next step is to ask them to join your email list! You can do this through many tools:

• Add a pop up on your website that invites visitors to subscribe 

• Offer a free download that gets delivered by email

• When you receive someone’s business card, ask them if you can add their email address to your list

• Bring an email sign-up sheet to events

• Add prospective clients following a discovery call

• Invite people to join your list through social media posts and messages

Now, your email list does not need to be limited to only those who fit your persona. You might want to include other contacts who are likely to find your content valuable or be good referral partners. But the bulk of your list, if it is going to be effective as a marketing tool, should be potential clients.

Asking people for their email address may feel uncomfortable at first, but it’s a muscle that needs to be worked. It will get easier with every request, and you’ll be surprised at how many people say yes as your confidence grows! And if you focus on the next part, you’ll be even more encouraged to get people on the list because you know it will actually benefit them.

Deliver Valuable Messaging Through Email Marketing

If your concern about sending emails to your targeted list is that you are only adding to the clutter in their inbox, then you may not be delivering something of value. This does not mean you should avoid sending emails. What you need to do instead is create valuable messages to send!

We already established that you are building a list of interested recipients. You know who your ideal client is, so you should also know what they like to see (or what would be helpful for them) in their incoming emails. This is where your messaging is vital. Does it speak directly to your persona? And is it interesting in a general sense?

I follow many brands because I thoroughly enjoy receiving their emails. Even if I don’t use their services or purchase their products, I have a good experience interacting with their content. I might not read everything they send, but I take the time to open a fair amount of emails. And every so often, it absolutely leads to my further engagement. That’s the whole point. Not everyone who receives your emails is going to turn into a client, but if they enjoy what you send and open your messages somewhat regularly, they are an asset to your brand.

They might share your email to a friend, mention your service when it is relevant to a conversation, start following you on social media, or personally reach out for intentional networking. What else might this look like?

• You should have fellow business owners on your email list who rely on you for certain industry information that you have a knack for simplifying (and you’re on their list for the same reason). 

• Do you ever find yourself looking forward to certain brand emails because they are funny? 

• Maybe you learned something recently that you know will be helpful to your email audience, whether or not they are likely clients.

When you land on a great way to provide value through your emails, your audience will appreciate seeing your name in their “from” column. It’s not clutter at all. Creating value takes careful planning. Your messages should be consistent in frequency and content so that readers know what to expect. This is all part of the strategy that helps you build effective email marketing.

Email Marketing is a Step in the Process, Not the End of the Line

Every marketing email should contain a call to action. After all, this is a business marketing practice, so we need to be realistic that the primary goal is to generate business. However, the email itself does not need to call people to buy something.

In fact, I recommend against trying to close a sale through your email marketing campaigns. Instead, I encourage calls to action that invite people to a next step. These steps are both micro and macro:

• At the micro level, what do you want people to do with each individual email? Examples include:

  • Read a blog article

  • Download a resource

  • Book a discovery call

  • Sign up for a webinar

  • Leave a review

• At the macro level, keep in mind that you are nurturing your audience toward an ultimate goal. You don’t want everyone on your list to be a permanent email subscriber and nothing more. Some individuals on your list are really just there to enjoy your content or DIY your helpful information. But a portion of your audience should be moving toward the next step.

What is your next step? Although your emails can be peppered with various and changing micro invitations, there needs to be a long-term invitation to something that brings them closer to becoming a client. This could be a discovery call, a webinar or class you offer, or an invitation to a private group or community you run.

Whatever your next step is, it has to fit with the decision-making process of your ideal client. It also needs to appear consistently in your emails, because you never know which email is going to resonate in just the right way to get them to engage that next step. Your goal is to attract your ideal clients further into your pipeline with every invitation so that they get to know you better and see themselves working with you.

Intentional Email Marketing Establishes Client Relationships

Now that we have overcome the reasons for avoiding an email marketing strategy, it’s important to begin from a solid foundation. Every marketing strategy, plan, and activity needs to come from the informed base of knowing exactly who your ideal client is, what they want, and how they make decisions. From there, it will be a much easier process to determine who you want on your email list, what you will deliver to them, and how you will invite them to the next step.

Small business owners are often at a loss when it comes to identifying these details about their ideal clients. It’s difficult to zoom out far enough on your own to see the whole picture. Marketing to Mission helps service business owners and leaders develop a focused marketing strategy so that they can reach their ideal clients. We always start with the foundational work so that we know exactly who your business is trying to attract and which resources will support that goal. If you have been struggling to maintain a consistent marketing plan, get in touch with me. I would love to learn more about your business and help you simplify your marketing to better fit your mission.