5 Essential Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Driving engagement and conversions

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to market your business thanks to its remarkable return on investment (ROI)—for every $1 spent, businesses see $54 of value. After receiving an email from a company, more than a quarter (27%) of customers will visit that website, 5% will call, and 12% will visit the physical store.

"Email marketing is beautiful because it’s an owned (read: low cost) channel that can usually be automated,” said Dawn Nichols, Head of Digital Strategy at Walmart. “It can be hyper-targeted and personalized, driving growth through the full funnel. It can be automated, so the up-front time to design a journey generates much higher ROI over time. And, people expect it. For small businesses especially, it adds a layer of legitimacy to a brand."

Unlocking those benefits requires careful strategy and execution. At Walmart Business, we know the time crunch small business owners face. That’s why we’ve collected five of the best email marketing tips for small businesses.

Email marketing tips for small businesses

Write punchy subject lines

There are more than 333 billion emails sent and received each day. On any given day, more than 100 will hit the average user’s inbox. How can you possibly stand out from the deluge of messages, spam or otherwise?

When your customers and prospects scan their inboxes for interesting emails, they’re going to read two things: who sent it and the subject line. Focus on making your subject lines as brief, eye-catching and curiosity-arousing as possible.

Aim for 60 characters or fewer, with no more than three marks of punctuation. Speak directly to the customer and tell them what the email contains and why they should care. Try to avoid words that spam filters will flag (even if that doesn’t guarantee you’ll dodge them).

Personalize content

According to McKinsey, 71% of customers expect a business to personalize its offerings to their tastes. 

The first step in personalizing content is to understand your customers. What’s their name? Where do they live? What kinds of products and services interest them? Once you have that info, plug it into your marketing. Placing customer names in subject lines is one of the tried-and-true email marketing tips for small businesses—47% of marketers already do it.

Email content can also highlight local events, share deals on products that complement previous purchases and celebrate birthdays. All of these tactics will help raise engagement and drive conversions.

“Personalization can mean many different things,” Nichols explained, “from a [[lead.firstname]] token in an email to an ML-powered propensity model to define audiences and content. It can be overwhelming. My advice is to do what you can with what you have. Some personalization is better than no personalization. And, always be on the lookout for new ways to learn more about your audience so that you can do more next time."

Segment your audience

Once you’ve got a prospect’s email, you’ve earned their attention. Now you have to convince them to buy.

By thinking about your customers, you’ll likely notice patterns in their lifestyles or demographics. Maybe they live along the East Coast or many work as engineers. Identifying these trends enables you to organize customers into different audience segments. From there, you can tailor your marketing to each segment and target its specific needs.

As you better target and personalize for your segments, you’ll show customers you understand them. That builds trust in your business, which makes customers more likely to read your marketing and respond positively.

Dig into metrics

The better you understand how your emails perform, the more quickly you can diagnose weaknesses and adjust your tactics.

Here are some of the key metrics for email marketing:

⦁ Opens: The number of people who opened the email. 

⦁ Click-throughs: The number of people who clicked a link in the email. 

⦁ Hard bounces: The number of emails that never arrived in their intended inbox because of permanent errors you can’t control, such as a non-existent address or a server blocking the email. Remove these addresses from your lists.

⦁ Soft bounces: The number of emails that didn’t arrive because of temporary, solvable technical problems. Fewer soft bounces means more emails are hitting their target inboxes.

⦁ Unsubscribes: The number of people who opened the email and unsubscribed from the list. 

Referring to industry benchmarks can give you a sense of where your business stands and what to improve next.

Automate campaigns

If there's one thing small business owners don't have, it's an excess of time. Individually drafting, addressing, scheduling and sending emails for mass email campaigns is too time-consuming. That's why automation is one of the most important small business email marketing tips.

When a customer first signs up for your emailing list, your marketing software should send them a personalized welcome message. When it's been a while since they last purchased, your software will automatically nudge them to take a look at your new stock. 

Set each of these automations in your software to ensure no customer falls through the cracks.

For additional insights on how to protect your business while focusing on marketing, explore our guide, What Is the Best Small Business Computer Security Software?

Get more done with Walmart Business+

Looking for more ways to save time? Walmart Business+ is here to help. With a Walmart Business+ membership, you can keep your office fully stocked with everything from snack food to file folders. Orders ship free¹, and any worth over $250 earn 2% back in Walmart Business Rewards².

Ready to save time and money? Start your Walmart Business+ membership today.

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²Exclusions apply. See full terms for details.