When utilized properly, email marketing has a huge role to play in creating lasting, profitable relationships between small businesses and their customers. Compared to social media marketing which is also a great way to reach and engage new and existing customers, email marketing takes a much more personalized approach in the sense that it goes straight to the intended user's inbox and isn't drowned out by a sea of other businesses and Ads at the time of engagement. At any moment a user is engaging with your email, it is just about you at the time until they click away.

More than 75% of businesses consider email a vital aspect of customer retention and when used properly, email has the potential to deliver the greatest return on investment of every marketing channel achieving $52 for every dollar spent in 2019 according to a survey conducted by the Data And Marketing Association.

A successful email marketing strategy like any other marketing strategy should aim at building meaningful relationships with your target audience. On the surface, email marketing might sound as seemingly simple as sending an email just as you'd send out a social media post to your audience but email is so personal that the receiver must have consented to receive it from you before it can even be sent to them, hence with email marketing, it is advisable to always choose a well thought out strategy over misleading tactics.

Why It Is Important, Benefits & Competitive Advantage:

1. No matter what happens, you own your email list. Unlike social media platforms where your account can be deleted, banned, or hacked into at any time and you may never be able to access it again after tirelessly growing your audience.
2. Email campaigns have a long lifespan in your target audience’s inboxes, keeping your marketing email top of mind for longer which increases the chance of them seeing and engaging with your content.
3. You can use personalization and have a direct relationship with your subscribers due to the fact that it is the only marketing channel that gives you a direct line of communication with your customers.
4. You can send tailored marketing content to different customers based on their unique interests and preferences by segmenting your subscriber list into different groups.

5. Email marketing generates the highest return on investment compared to other marketing channels and it is easier to A/B test your ideas compared to other organic marketing channels.

How To Get Started With Email Marketing

1. First Choose An Email Service Provider

An email service provider is software that allows you to send email campaigns to a list of subscribers. In simple terms, it is a set of tools for email marketing that stores email addresses and sends out emails to these addresses.

Some of the notable email service providers (some of which I have used in the past) are Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Privy, Omnisend, Seguno, Constant Contact, Convert Kit, etc

There are important factors to consider when choosing an email service provider, some of which include: 

• Pricing - Choose the one that best fits your budget at the time you are signing up while also considering the cost of their paid plans for when you need to upgrade in the future.
• Functionality - Consider what your unique needs are for your brand strategy and check to see if the email service provider has such features to accommodate your needs.
• Ease Of Use - How easy is it to hit the ground running? Do they have guides and resources available to help you quickly get started and find your way around? 
• Customer Support - Is the team accessible, helpful, and timely in their response when you need help?

2. Sign Up And Start Growing Your Email List

After choosing the email service provider that is the best fit for your needs, sign up and start growing your subscriber list. When it comes to building an email list a good rule of thumb is to not compromise on quality for quantity. You want to have an engaged audience, people who actually want to hear from you. Do not go the route of purchasing a subscriber list or adding people's email addresses to your list without their consent.

An email list is a database that contains the email addresses of people who gave their consent to receive your email campaigns

With the right approach and strategy, every email list has the potential to grow into a source of income by engaging your subscriber in a meaningful and relatable way. Before you start building a list, first have a clear understanding of:

• Who your target audience are.
• What can you offer them that they would like and find useful?
• How can you make it easy for them to subscribe to your email list?
• Why exactly would they be incentivized to subscribe to your email list?
• Where do they spend their time? This would help you know what platform to share your sign-up forms and landing pages.

It is important to know that growing a high-quality email list takes time and effort but the benefits are endless and very rewarding. Below are practical ways to get people to subscribe to her list.

1. Make your forms highly visible and easily accessible. Embed sign-up forms on your website, add and share links to your landing pages to your various social media platforms, and anywhere else your audience spends their time.
2. Make the ask, with a clear and personalized call-to-action (CTA). Your CTA is the button text that persuades people to click through.
3. Make a compelling offer to incentivize people to sign-up. Most people are constantly searching for things that will help them. Whether it be knowledge, good deals, or anything that will make their lives easier. Offer your audience something of value that compels them to convert.
4. Create a sense of urgency around the offer by telling them to sign up latest by a certain time to access the offer, or create a compelling offer for the first X amount of subscribers. This way they will engage quickly.

3. Set Goals And Objectives For Your Email Marketing Strategy

When it comes to goal setting, it is all about the outcomes you are seeking to achieve. What outcomes do you want to achieve for your business or personal brand with your email marketing? Start your email marketing campaign strategy planning process by first defining your goals. Is it to attract new customers, and/or retain existing customers? Is it to build relationships with your audience and keep them engaged and loyal to your brand? Is it to keep in touch and educate your users? Is it to increase revenue? etc You can outline as many goals as you want, but make sure it is specific and actionable.

4. Now Plan Your Email Campaigns Around The Goals You Have Set

When it comes to planning email marketing campaigns, you must understand that it isn't a one size fits all type of situation. It is important to use personalization and segmentation so that you can give each customer group campaigns that make sense and resonates with them. Decide what the frequency of your newsletter will be. Will it be weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc? It is important that your audience hear from you often, but not too often that they unsubscribe. Plan your campaigns around your content strategy, products launches, new feature releases, festive seasons and holidays, customer anniversaries, company updates, etc Create a content calendar for your newsletter and make sure each campaign has a clear call-to-action and is relevant to the subscriber based on their interests and demographic. Now plan your automated workflows and schedule your email campaigns.

5. Decide On Which Metrics You Would Use To Measure Your Goals For Your Campaigns.

Once your goals are clearly defined, it makes it easier to decide what metrics to measure them by that will indicate if you are on the right track. In this way, you will measure your email campaign outcomes in alignment with the goals and objectives you have outlined. For instance, if your goal is to increase revenue, attract new customers, and engage your audience, you can set metrics like the number of new subscribers, sales attributed to email, and click-through and conversion rates. Set a time-frequency to ensure you are consistently tracking said metrics. Will you measure your goals daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc?

6. Keep On Testing And Evaluating Your Campaign Strategy To See What Works And What Doesn’t.

The metrics you measure and data you gather after evaluating your campaigns will help you understand your audience on a deeper level. You will understand what motivates them, what keeps them engaged, what makes them convert, what makes them unsubscribe, etc Make sure to tweak your campaign strategy based on your user behaviour and needs every step of the way, this way you can keep creating value that they cannot pass on.