What the heck is an email sequence anyway?
When I first came across email marketing in my corporate career, I was amazed by how scientific the team were that ran the department. Surely it can't be that complicated?
For a B2B business, it is hugely beneficial to spend some time working out your email strategy. It is a channel that is completely owned by you so it's worth maximising this opportunity if you can find the time or resource to do it.
5 reasons to use email marketing as a communication channel for small business - it can be so much more than newsletters
- Feeds into your content marketing activity - if you are investing time in creating blog content, this can be re-purposed in email.
- You are already talking to an engaged audience - your mailing list consists of subscribers who are already interested in your business, you are doing them a disservice if you don't provide them with valuable email content.
- Analytics - so many valuable insights can be found through email marketing from simply seeing who opens the mails to where they click, what time of the day works best, how many times the email is opened, you name it your email service can tell you.
- Timely - instant access to your list that you own, without worrying about an algorithm, the challenge now is to create something compelling that makes them open the email!
- Low cost - Most small businesses can work with a relatively low cost email marketing plan so the only cost is your time to write the copy, many of the automation can then run on their own with little input but generating leads in which makes a powerful ROI.
What are the different types of email campaigns and how can you harness their power for your business?
- Promotional - you have a brand new launch and you want to shout about it to your mailing list? Create a short sharp blast that you can mail out to support your other marketing activities such as pr outreach, blogs, social media or paid ads.
- Welcome series - a prospect comes to your website or social channels and decides they want to hear more from you. Welcome emails can be set up to trigger automatically so that they don't have to wait till the next newsletter. These emails are an ideal opportunity to share a little more about you and your business, perhaps share a link to some valuable content and encourage the person to take further action such as an offer or a discovery call.
- Nurture series - similar to the welcome series, these are usually automated but can nurture a prospect until such time as they might be ready to take action. An example could be to send helpful tips and advice on how to solve a problem themselves or share examples or case studies of clients who have used your product or service. The overall intention is to keep the dialogue open and create a lasting relationship with that prospect.
- Newsletter - I have found individual business owners often start here as its a classic way of communicating with subscribers. There is definitely a place for a newsletter both in terms of brand awareness and to help direct your audience to relevant or new content that might be published elsewhere.
Get help planning your email activity this year
If email marketing is something you want to explore further this year, I have worked with Hubspot, MailerLite and Mailchimp and would love to help you get going, my content collaboration session might be an ideal opportunity to brainstorm what you want to achieve and how you might go about it, or if you would prefer to outsource it completely then I can help with that too!
