Advertising. Website. Social media. You may already have employed some or all of these marketing solutions to spread the word about your brand, company or organization. Is there more you can do to build your brand?
Absolutely.
One suggestion is to create a regular email newsletter.
Why email? Think about it: Emails are flexible in what they allow you to do. Primarily, you are reminding your customers or potential customers that you are there, that you are relevant and that you add value to their lives.
Email newsletters are also a great way to showcase expertise. People who own businesses usually possess a great deal of knowledge about those businesses. To be successful at what you do you need to know a lot about it. If you are a successful owner of a tea room, you likely know a LOT about different kinds of teas and their various magical qualities (can you tell I’m a tea lover?). If you own a hardware store, you likely know more than the typical person about home repairs, DIY projects and the latest tools.
Take advantage of your own expertise
Ace Hardware, one of my favorite hardware stores, is based in Oakbrook, Illinois, but has a national reputation and a great “tips” area on the company’s website.
The company showcases its expertise online. It fails, however, to reach out in a major way on social media or in emails to continually remind customers and potential customers that Ace is THE local hardware store to trust and shop.
I do get an email, but it’s purely sales-oriented. As you can see from the one pictured here, the email puts all its eggs in one basket: Targeting people who want to paint their home. For those who DO want to paint their home, the Joanna Gaines Magnolia Home collection is probably very enticing.
But get a load of this page on the ACE site, filled with tips, tools and video tutorials. If, as a part of this email, ACE had included a link or two to its “Paint Studio,” there would be opportunities to capture customers on the website as well as in the email.
Not only does the website have a ton of content for those looking to paint, but it also has a Joanna Gaines video as well as specific tips on that specialized page. If selling readers on the Joanna Gaines collection is the key, ACE has so many opportunities in this one email to earn a “click” and help customers become invested in the product line. And in ACE.
Sharing knowledge on your website and on social media is the first step. Write about what you know or engage someone who writes well to do so. Building an archive of “evergreen” content on your website is not only great to establishing credibility but it’s also great for SEO (search engine optimization). We talk more about that in our 10 Ways to Improve Your Website article.
But to reach your customers or potential customers they must seek out your website or search for the content. An email newsletter, on the other hand, allows you to push that content to customers.
Take our hardware store as an example:
- Write a short “how-to” article every week showcasing a project. Perhaps with a short video. Or, leverage content you already have archived on your site, if you are a longtime business with a lot of great articles or videos.
- Create a list of customer emails and send a weekly email featuring the “project of the week,” with a link back to your site and a list of all the other projects. These projects would, ideally, tie in with special sales or times of the year. For example, in the spring you might emphasize spring cleaning or tips on storing your snowblower for the season.
- Use the email as an opportunity to offer specials or discounts to the recipients.
- The email is a way to do several things:
- Keep your business top of mind
- Let customers know about specials, sales or discounts
- Build customer loyalty
- Share your knowledge and build your credibility
- Drive clicks to your website, where you then have a further opportunity to engage with customers
So, you may be convinced that an email newsletter is a good idea. But you probably have no idea how to start.
Creating an email in 5 easy steps
Here are a few tips on getting started:
- Find an email platform to use. There are many email platforms that are free or low-cost, and others that are much more sophisticated and allow for more sophistication. I’d suggest that business owners new to email marketing use something simple to start. But if you can, also find a platform that allows for some automation. If, for example, you can program your email to send every week automatically with the latest story or stories from your website, that would be optimal. Cutting and pasting into an email template introduces the opportunity for errors, bad links and misspellings. Ask your website manager whether there is an email platform that works well with your CMS (content management system). For example, WordPress has many “plugins” that integrate directly and allow you to send emails that tie into your website.
- Decide on a cadence. Will you send an email weekly? Biweekly? Monthly? Don’t bite off more than you can chew. If you are a small business, start with a monthly email until you build enough of an audience that it makes sense to move to biweekly or weekly.
- Create a calendar. I’d suggest planning out at least six months of monthly emails or three months of weekly emails. Use the seasons, special events or your own knowledge of your business to determine what the “focus” will be for each newsletter.
- Create a template. Don’t try to create a new email from scratch every week or every month. That’s just not efficient, and it’s not necessary. A “template” that has two or three areas to it and can allow for plug-in articles, photos and links is the best way to go. And aim for simplicity; if it becomes to burdensome to create and maintain it will likely fall by the wayside very quickly.
- Create a recipients list. If you already have email addresses for your customers, you are a step ahead on this. You can send ONE email to your customers asking them to “opt in” to your newsletter. You cannot, unless your customers agreed upon giving you their emails, subscribe them automatically to your regular email. The best approach is to use what is called a “double opt in” email. That means when you ask someone to opt in, you send a confirmation email to them so they can verify that they did indeed opt in to receive your email. Without this step, anyone can opt a person in to an email, and your lists are not as “clean” as a result.
There are a lot of ways to build email lists, some better than others. If you have no emails yet of your customers, start by offering a “loyalty program” or put a goldfish bowl on your counter that offers a monthly gift card to one random person who puts in their name and email.
Can small businesses do this, too?
Ace is large; the company clearly has the resources to create a strong website and a regular customer email. But what if you own the local hardware on the corner that is trying to compete with not just Ace by also Lowe’s and Menards and Home Depot?
One local hardware in Metro Detroit that has a great reputation in its community is Frentz & Sons in Royal Oak. Frentz & Sons does some of the same things Ace does, with articles on the site showing expertise. It also makes a point of telling online visitors that it has been in business since 1932, and includes historical images.
Frentz also has a basic Facebook page. But think what such a local business could do if it created a weekly email for customers, highlighting the week’s specials or a quick tip by the very knowledgeable family that owns the business. The business already has a loyalty program; that gives the owners a great email list of already-engaged customers.
