If you’re a small or new business, it might feel like you don’t have enough contacts or prospects to justify an email campaign, that is, unless you’ve dedicated every waking minute to lead generation or forked out shed loads of cash for bought (and likely irrelevant) data.
Aggregating good data can be difficult, but if you haven’t managed to build a list as long as your arm it needn’t delay your email strategy.
Email is one of the most powerful traffic drivers to your website. Think of it as a personalised message delivered straight to their door – rather than a social media post they might see or a poster they might walk past. Only, unlike print, it’s significantly cheaper and quicker to put together, too. Just one click, and that customer could be perusing your website.
I’m going to let you in on just a few ways you can maximise having a small database for your email marketing, and even some ways it might benefit you. Let’s get going.
Save time and money
When you’ve only got a small database, you’re likely to have a much better idea of who they all are and what they might be looking for, allowing you to effectively segment them and decide which message to send. Imagine having 30,000 contacts and trying to lump together the similar prospects.
Without a sophisticated CRM, sounds like a headache waiting to happen. But 100 prospects? That’s just an hour of worthwhile work.
Send highly relevant messages
You might have a section of leads you gathered from your recent e-book, and another who have been your customers for some time. For the first group, some more literature, blogposts or case studies might be a good idea, as they’re still coming round to working with you. For the second group, perhaps a return-customer offer will do the trick. One thing’s for sure – when your database is smaller, you can make these messages pretty personalised and relevant, meaning it’s more likely they’re going to get opened in the first place.
Give more away
Speaking of offers, if you’re only emailing a select group of people, the number who actually act upon your email decreases. Therefore you can probably afford to be a little more generous with your proposition, whether that’s a 2 for 1, half price or points-based scheme. The offer looks more enticing to your recipients, but you don’t have to face up to the pain of fulfilling that offer if those 30,000 prospects all opt in.
Do you have advice for emailing with small marketing lists? Let us know in the comments below!
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