Is Email Marketing Good for Small Businesses?


The answer to the question posed in this article’s title—Is Email Marketing Good for Small Businesses?—is a resounding yes.

Keep reading to discover six ways email marketing can help your business—no matter how small.

1. Email Marketing Produces Results

Though email marketing may have a bad rap as simply consisting of inbox-clogging messages, statistics bear out the effectiveness and overall positive outlook of email marketing.

In one survey cited by a contributor on Entrepreneur.com, 72 percent of US adults indicated a preference for email communication from companies. Ninety-one percent said they would “like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with.”

Moreover, a strong majority of companies pointed to emails as a key part of their marketing efforts.

2. Email Marketing Is Cost Effective

Another point in favor of email marketing is that it can be much more cost effective than other means of advertising. Advertisements placed on social media, radio, television, and billboards can be pricey.

Moreover, ads placed in those venues may reach lots of people, but many of them will not be interested in your company. For example, a billboard for a location-specific business wastes much of its power on people simply driving through the area rather than staying, while television and radio ads are prone to people automatically tuning out.

Conversely, emails can be tailored to audiences that already are interested or have a high likelihood of becoming so. Email marketing, as a Forbes.com contributor put it, is “an efficient way to generate leads at a reasonable cost.”

3. Email Marketing Can Be Specifically Targeted

As alluded to in the previous section, email-marketing campaigns can be highly tailored to a receptive audience. For instance, people visiting your company’s website have already shown some degree of interest. Why not tap into that by providing a quick way to sign up for your business’s mailing list? Other measures, like a popup inviting folks to sign up before they leave your page, can push this method even farther.

Once people do sign up, you can target potential and current customers even more specifically. For instance, you can send out promotional emails to people who have already made a purchase from your company and another set of welcome emails to people who have yet to do so.

4. Email Marketing Is Versatile

Another key selling point of email marketing is its versatility. As previously mentioned, emails can be used to alert customers about promotions, enticing them to make purchases they may have otherwise held off on. However, that is just one example of what they can do.

Emails can also invite people to events where they can learn more about your product or service—or even make purchases. Additionally, product-launch messages can alert customers about new items your business offers.

Seasonal emails can be particularly useful for small businesses; for example, a company that provides insulation in an area with cold winters might reach out to customers about winterizing their homes. Finally, newsletters are a way to stay in touch with messages that are not overtly advertisements.

No matter the type of message, all can link back to your website and provide other ways for customers to find out more. In addition, by varying the content you send out, you will be more able to keep customers interested in your messages.

5. Email Marketing Boosts Credibility

A well-designed email-marketing campaign can also boost your business’s credibility. By sharing information that your audience finds relevant, you can show that your company possesses expertise and that it cares about using that expertise to help customers. Additionally, tools like email templates can add a professional shine to your messages, further increasing your credibility.

6. Email Marketing Is Trackable

In addition to all of the above advantages, email marketing is also trackable. That means you can see what messages are (and are not) generating engagement from customers. Metrics allow you to track how customers interact with each message, meaning you can do more of what’s working and tweak what isn’t working.

Final Thoughts

If you haven’t tried email marketing, you definitely should. It’s versatile, trackable, and cost-effective. Furthermore, it can be targeted to specific audiences, and it produces results.

You can use email to send educational content to people in the early stages of their buying journey. You can send email to existing customers about specials, offers, and discounts you’re running. And you can email customers about important announcements. You can even use targeted email marketing to send out a weekly or monthly newsletter with highlights and links to your company’s blog content.

What do you think?

What do you think about email marketing? Do you use it in your business? Let us know in the comments below. And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to receive more helpful tips like this in your inbox.