Today, I am discussing with you the 10 best practices for email marketing for small business in Nigeria. You see, Email marketing is a sure way to keep customers and get in touch with them about new happenings in your business. It is a good digital marketing tool to help grow businesses in Nigeria and since it is very important that know the do’s and don’ts of this practice to avoid losing your subscribers and/or money/value.
10 Best Practices For Email Marketing For Small Business In Nigeria
The 10 Best Practices For Email Marketing For Small Business In Nigeria
Here are some email marketing tips for small businesses to make their email marketing more efficient:
1. Get In Touch Only Occasionally
One reason why customers get tired and unsubscribe from emails is because of the rate at which they receive emails. Fewer mails should be sent and it should not be all the time. Twice or thrice a week is a great schedule to start with. This way, you can include all the messages you want to pass across in few email messages. Also, ensure that you keep it as simple and as short as possible.
2. Make It Easier For People To Register In Your Email List
This should be the first note to take as it is the start of emailing. Do not ask too much questions while asking people to register to your email list(s). This may make the customer feel like you want to choke up their mailbox with irrelevant messages. Just keep it simple. Simply ask for their first name and email address and subscribe them after they click register and after confirmation you’re good to go with your email marketing campaigns.
3. Offer Incentives
Make people want to join your email list by offering incentives that will make them eager to give you their emails. This can be a book (PDF), a video training course, a scheduled training offer, price discount, discounted subscriptions, etc.
4. Email Subscription positioning
Carefully and strategically position email subscription badges or forms to collect visitors’ email addresses at the end of articles or at the bottom of pages of your blog/website. This way, customers can subscribe if they find your product interesting and promising. Customers who view your products till the end to where the subscribe button is, are likely to subscribe to your email list. So do not distract their viewing by placing the subscription button at the top or in a pop up.
5. Inform your customers about the kind of emails to expect from you.
What do your customers expect to receive as emails? This must be clearly stated before you ask someone to subscribe to your mailing list. Even after people have subscribed to your email list, and while you are mailing them, be realistic about your offers. Do not make a promise you cannot deliver otherwise your email marketing efforts can be ruined.
6. Summarize Your Emails
Your emails do not have to be lengthy every time. Depending on the situation, there are times you could you can use only pictures or info-graphic to pass across your messages. People only give time to things that are interesting enough to draw their attention. The world has gotten too busy and people won’t waste their time on something they find uninteresting.
7. Use social media to get more subscribers
You can also use Social media platforms to get more subscribers by asking your friends and followers to register on your email list after you have told them the benefit of doing so. This is another way of gathering more people to your email lists. People you already are familiar with online will be easier to convince than entirely new ones.
8. Ethically Spy on Your Competitors
There is a way to stay ahead of your competitors in email marketing and do better than them. First, register on their email list(s) and take note of the strategies that they use to email and market to their customers. Check for what kind of emails they are sending and whether it is frequent or not. The kind of product that your competitors promote is another thing to check for. When you know this, innovate on how to make yours better than theirs. You should work on things like the quality, the quantity and delivery rate (speed) of the same or similar product/service. This is nothing like copying or plagiarizing your competitor’s works or ways. It’s just business and you are only trying to stay ahead of them.
9. Include links to your social media pages in your emails.
There are some customers who do not check their emails often but may want to follow you on social media. This is because your customers may be more active on social media than they are with checking their emails. These kind of customers are easily marketed to through social media. So, it is wise to always include links to your social media pages for them to click on within/during your email campaigns.
10. Always ask for email verification.
This way you get real contacts to send your emails to. The problem with not asking for email verification is that you are not sure the customer provided the right email address. Some may even make mistakes while typing the email in your email subscription form and then your email starts going to somebody else who knows nothing about your business.
Also there are some mistakes that can be made which can destroy the efforts of the business to build a good email marketing strategy.
These mistakes are as follows:
1. Inability to Compose a Valid and Authentic Email
Some emails we receive which do not include some things are considered as spam emails. An email should include an address, an unsubscribe button and it needs to be able to remind the customer where the email was gotten from. A logo or web address could do this. This is a very effective way to lose customers because not only does the person see the email as spam he/she also sees the business as incompetent.
2. Not Being on Your Customer’s Contacts List
Your emails may be received as spam if you are not on your customer’s contact list. To handle this issue, you can simply ask them to add you to their contact list.
3. Buying Emails (Don’t do it!)
Do not buy emails from others just to make your email contacts voluminous. This may seem like a wise thing to do and you may think that you are saving yourself the stress of having to gather subscribers yourself but in the long run, this is more risky and frustrating. You cannot just start sending emails to random people who have not come in contact with your business from anywhere before. One by one they will just unsubscribe until you are back to the beginning where you started the email hunt. It is better to wait for customers to subscribe themselves as this is the best way to get lasting subscribers.
Conclusion
Email marketing is vital for the growth and success of businesses but knowing what and what not to do is also important to avoid loss and mistakes. This article on the 10 best practices for email marketing for small business in Nigeria covered the Do’s and Don’ts of the practice. I hope that you will take the pieces of advice shared in this article to the bank and apply them to your email marketing endeavor as a small business operating in Nigeria.
