9 Small Business Email Strategies

- 16 minutes read

Some people may think “why is is a small business email an issue worth discussing?”, well, it’s becoming more and more popular to see small businesses growing up nowadays. In fact, never in history many companies have started in a so short amount of time.

At the same time many other different medias have appeared, email remained strong to its core and is, for most of users, the digital hub which interlinks every other account and media. Some companies have changed their strategies by using email marketing, others chose spamming, others even went to cold emailing.

The main point is that it doesn’t really matter how big is your company, you’re gonna have to deal with email for business in a regular basis. What you must keep in mind is how valuable you and your solution (product or service) are going to be to your prospects and customers. When you’re able to translate your value through a marketing campaign, only then you’ll be more prepared to sell.

And it’s very common that small businesses just are not prepared to deal with it. Depending on your skills, some companies won’t have someone specifically for marketing, which is why there are tips that we’re going to be sharing with you today, both on tools and strategies that can be useful to your small business email strategy to fully work and provide you better sales.

Get to know your target 

Do you know who your clients are?

If your answer was “Everybody” or something close to it, I have to tell you. Think again.

Although there are companies which attend big markets, no one targets everybody – even if you lack competitors.

Ask yourself and peers, check who your target is and aim them for your campaigns. People want to feel special. You won’t want to be remembered for your bad offers.

 

Want your Business to Sell More? Track, Track and Track

Tracking is learning. A small business email (and other digital marketing tools) is awesome because or its “trackability”. In opposite to a billboard or even printed advertising, you have means to know how many people were reached, how many opened your message, and clicked your call to action button… these tools exist so you can use it, so make the most of them.

As you track, you’ll start perceiving patterns. Such as which message converts more, what kind of button makes people click more, what title makes people unsubscribe your list… the list goes on.

 

For a small business email is a first step to relationship

In order to your company have significant growth, you should also think about how you’re going to maintain the clients you already have – and not losing them to competitors. The key is relationship.

As in a marriage, you’ll expect mutual loyalty and support. Give your best to clients you already have and always give them value. Via email, it can mean many things, such as:

• Sharing valuable content – original content, or even interesting links you’ve seen which have all in common with this client;

• Providing opportunities – like discounts, events and new products/services;

• Offering new partnerships – if you have different types of clients, you can act like a bridge between them.

Follow-up, but don’t be pushy

More common than receiving a “Mail Status Failure” messages is to receive no message at all. People are busy and often they just don’t answer you because they were doing something else.

Nevertheless, there are important points you can explore before giving up, the following structure gives an example of what you might do:

• Initial email – which will include just basic information on your task;

• Follow on Twitter;

• Favourite some posts;

• Send a second email;

• View LinkedIn profile;

• Send third email;

• Add on LinkedIn.

Thank customers for interacting or even for shopping

For a small business email, sending well-crafted  thank-you texts make a great difference when it comes to make your customers happier and more faithful. It shows your interest and make you seem more friendly to your recipient. Here’s a template:

Hi, Sarah! It’s so good to hear from you.

 I noticed you visited our website here at Hardwell, thank you so much for shopping with us! 

Our company has been growing in the last few years and the satisfaction of customers like you is our main goal here. We’re always focusing on providing the best online experience.

 If there’s anything we can do to improve our service, please let us know. 

 Thank you one more time for your support.

 Looking forward to hear from you in near future,

 Monica

Remember: people are busy – I have probably said it before – and there are also many important things going on in their head. So if you want they to remember you, you must to a little further and try to be present more than average.

One great way to do that and to also get their loyalty and sympathy is to thank them for things, which can be:

• Milestones you accomplish together;
• Things they’ve done for you and they didn’t have to;
• Meetings you had together;
• A phone call;
• And so on…

 

Decrease the Time your Email Takes

Sometimes we only think of how we can improve strategies that affect directly our customers, but we should also think about how we can make our work differently in order to make things faster.

If you are a Gmail user and want to optimise time, first of all, go to Settings > General > Keyboard Shortcuts and enable the Keyboard Shortcuts on option. Then Save changes.

This will improve your time by leaving your mouse/trackpad out, so you don’t have to move your hands. You’ll see how it is time-saving, this is what you can do:

• Want to keep reading an email later? While with the message open, click X and you flag it as important;
• Is this message a spam? Type ! and let Gmail know;
• Press J or K to move to previous or recent messages;
• For composing a new message, press C;
• Want to reply a message? Just type R;
• Oh, want to reply all? Type A instead;
• You’re getting it! Forward a message? Yes… type F;
• Ready to send, right? Press TAB and then ENTER. Now your message have already been sent;
• Go to your Contacts by pressing G and then C;
• Go to your Drafts with G and then D. You got it, right? Go(G) + Drafts(D);
• Go to Inbox? YES! G and I. Don’t forget you must press these keys separately. One, and then the other.

Getting Customers’ Emails

If you want to send better emails to your prospects, you should first have your prospect’s email, right? Well, many companies struggle to get this information. However, nowadays it has become much easier to get them. Many softwares can boost your reach.

One of my favourites is called found.ly. It uses LinkedIn contacts information in order to get email contacts. It surely works smoothly and helps optimise time, so you save it a lot. Here’s how it works:

1 You install Found.ly plug-in in your browser, so it will start working seamlessly;

2 You’ll see there’s a new button called “Add Prospect” beside every person’s profile in LinkedIn. Just click it and found.ly will find this person’s information for you automatically.

3 Add your favourite prospects, in order to organise people which will receive your e-mails;

4 The application will look for every person’s contact informations, such as most probable e-mail account;

5 You’ll be guided to send (or schedule) e-mails and their follow-ups to your prospects, or you can even export your email list to whatever service you already use.

Email is a part of Lead Generation

And lead generation is part of a sales team work. So you are going to need an structure in order to optimise your lead generation, starting by a inside sales team (as you divide sales responsibilities through different people, or even teams, you facilitate their work, making it more productive and less overloaded). Here it follows an ideal team structure, based on my experience, you should have at least one person in each of the below:

• Prospect and Lead generation, which will pass leads ahead when they become “warm leads” to;

• Appointment setting, which will provide further information to leads, in order to facilitate the conversion. These people might also have to give further information that watsn given during the first step of sales process;

• Calls, demos and closing, which will always work with prepared leads, which past through both previous stages, and will try to close business with them;

• Customer success, which will do after-sales work, helping customers and trying to provide the best experience.

Even if you can’t afford to break your team, or having multiple people working on it, you should break your sales processes in order to organise work and convert more.

Ok, now let’s say your work until now is complete. So you have a well prepared company, with a good purpose, positioning, you are available in many different medias, so your target can get to you more easily, you have your email list and even your sales team. Wow, lots of work, but there’s still plenty ahead if you really want to keep these leads nurtured and loyal. But it really worths all the work.

So let’s move on to the cold email subject line tips and templates!

 

Always be polite (and friendly)

At this point, you probably already know that many people won’t answer to your emails. It is not their obligation, people tend to ignore advertising messages when they don’t feel comfortable to buy the product/service.

Don’t play the angry salesperson which will send an email saying “Why won’t you answer me?” or “Please don’t ignore me!”. It will truly make you lose the client and also your good reputation.

It is very easy to perceive a person’s mood by the way they write an email. So try to maintain polite all the time and be understanding. Even if you’re not getting replies, say something like “Please contact me anytime in case you need something”. Just be aware not to sound too polite – you are not a robot.

Furthermore, if you perceive they won’t reply to any follow-up (even though they’ve opened all your messages), you might have to stop messaging them. Some people are very polite and they will not tell you they’re not interested.

You can send a message like “Hey, as I can see, this is not the right time for you, so I’ll stop emailing. Maybe in the future we can make find better solutions. Thanks!”. Just don’t play the passive-agressive person, because it’ll make you lose your opportunity, by making them feel guilty and stressed.

 

In conclusion

To sum it up, don’t forget that small business email strategies can go far beyond these tips, but they are certainly a beginning in case your company hasn’t done any until now.

It is really important to be aware that sometimes we might fail in our tasks, and sometimes we’ won’t attract as much people as we wished, but the most important part is to keep trying and looking up for new solutions which will be able to make the most of your company – and of your profit.

So, which of the strategies did you enjoy most? Please let us know in the comments below and share this post.

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