5 Email Newsletter Tips for Small Businesses

In a world of social media, email has remained a tried and true way to connect with customers. It’s simple, everybody uses it, and it works. 

We want small businesses to thrive here at Evolve, so we’ve got five tips to help your small business make the most of email marketing.

1. Clickable Logo

Put your logo at the top and make it link to your website. Duh, right? You’d be surprised at how many companies don’t do that. Maybe the logo is there, but it’s not linked. People end up hunting around for your URL before turning to Google (or just giving up). Or the logo isn’t there and you risk losing people right off the bat because they don’t know who you are.

2. Send Email Consistently 

There’s no point to having an email list if you never send anything to it. Set up a consistent schedule to send your emails. Go with something you can manage (and that’s probably less frequent than you think). Email works because people remember who you are and expect to hear from you. You want people thinking, “Oh yeah, they send lunch coupons!” But you have to be consistent. A haphazard email schedule will quickly mean never sending an email.

3. Mobile Friendly

It’s hard to believe anyone still has to say this, but make sure your email is mobile friendly. So many people read email on their phones, so it has to work on mobile. Most email newsletter services will do that for you, but make sure you play nice with images that are easily viewable on phones and use alt tags (often images don’t load in email, so the alt tags are even more important—though you should use alt tags anyway). 

4. Focus on the Customer

Your email newsletter is not a chance to talk about you. It should be all about your customer—or more specifically, how you can help your customer. Your customers don’t care that you upgraded your equipment. But how that upgrade might make their lives easier, say with online booking? That’s something they will care about. 

5. Offer Value

Why should people open your email? Give them a reason to click by offering something valuable. Offer a discount or a freebie, helpful information, or something they couldn’t otherwise get. For a retail or transactional business, a discount is probably the way to go. For a knowledge-based business, like an insurance agent or financial advisor, helpful information is a good way to showcase expertise while helping people. If your industry has fans, exclusive access might be the thing to share. Make your email worth reading.