The Power of Email Lists: Why Your Small Business Needs One
Email lists are an often underutilized marketing area for many small businesses, which tend to take a backseat to the more in the spotlight marketing areas like social media marketing.
But building an email list shouldn’t be overlooked for trendier options as it’s an important backup and marketing tool for the continued success of your business website.
An email list can help you:
- Promote your latest products and posts
- Gather information on what your visitors want more of
- Engage with your customers
- Take away reliability on third party software
- Protect yourself against search engine algorithm changes
This article will take you through the benefits of why you need to build email lists to support your business, no matter how big or small.
1. Emails have Higher Conversion Rates
When creating your latest email to send out, whether it’s a promotion or email with the latest posts and updates, organically grown email lists have a higher conversion rate than their social media counterparts.
A good conversion rate for emails is over 16%. Compare that with social media, which has a significantly lower conversion rate at around 1 – 5%. You can see why building your email list can help increase your website traffic and sales.
2. Cheaper to re-engage old customers than it is to convert new
Converting a new sign-up to buy your products can be a difficult task. It can take a few emails from you along with social proof that you are a trustworthy brand before they push the button to purchase from your website.
However, having an email list filled with people who have already purchased from you in the past, but might have forgotten about your services, or products can be an easy win.
Existing customers are more likely to open your emails to see what you offer, increasing your open rate statistics and, in turn, are more likely to make a purchase.
These factors are why focusing on existing customers with customer retention emails should be a focus for small businesses looking to grow profits, even with a small email list.
3. Helps build relationships with your visitors
Emails are not only about creating sales and driving traffic. Yes, those are two great points about why you need to build your email list, but building relationships with your customers can help improve your open rates, click-through rates, and brand awareness over time.
Personalizing your emails and offering services, information, and products relevant to them will stop your emails from being marked as spam.
Personalizing your subject lines can help with open rate, but according to a GetRespnse study, this tactic might have been over used by marketers in the past. So be sure to test with and without personalization on your email subject lines.
Segmenting your email lists and promoting to specific groups by previous purchase, location, and website activity also has a remarkable increase in your revenue potential.
Increase your relationships further by getting them involved in your business. Use your newsletter to send out surveys asking them what they’d want to see more of, what they’d change about the site, and send out quizzes to gather the information that you can use in your marketing efforts to help bolster your communications.
4. Drive traffic even if hit by Google Algorithm update
Many businesses focus their efforts on SEO, and for good reasons. According to BrightEdge, in 2019, 53% of trackable organic traffic to websites came from search engines. Which is over half of website traffic.
But what happens if Google changes its algorithm one day, you get hit with a penalty or are just plain unlucky? For many, you’d lose all profitable traffic to your site overnight and have to find new ways to drive traffic and sales.
Luckily, if you’ve been building your email list from day one, you will hopefully have a decent amount of subscribers. Subscribers, which you can leverage to continue to drive traffic to your site and sales as you work on new ways to market or fix any issues you might have.
Email lists can help mitigate factors out of your control and provide a valuable source of primed customers.
5. Don’t need to rely on third party tools
The same goes for other third-party tools that many businesses help drive traffic to their sites.
Such as social media tools like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or Reddit. Or backlinks from other websites.
Any changes they make to their terms, ownership, or how they work can significantly impact your business if you’ve focused your efforts on driving traffic from them to your website.
A well-rounded email list can help mitigate the effects of this just like it can with your search engine optimization efforts, helping you stay afloat while building up another marketing channel or growing your list further.
6. Increases Repeat Traffic Stats
Google has over 200 ranking factors that rank your website and its pages. One of those which can have a factor big or small (no one knows) is repeat traffic.
Visitors who keep coming back to your site can be seen as a valuable source of information, trustworthy, and worth a boost to your rankings.
Guess what? When you send emails with links to your website’s blog, products, or services, if that person has interacted with your site recently and clicks on one of your links back to your site will be seen as a repeat visitor.
Repeat traffic and the other 199 ranking factors can add a rankings boost for your site in Google.
Tools to Help in Building an Email List
Popular email marketing software like Aweber and Sendinblue provide you with the tools that you can use to grow your email lists organically.
You’ll find sign-up forms and an easy-to-use drag and drop email builder which lets you create visually good-looking emails with a few clicks of a button.
But these are more than just sign-up forms and email creators. With email automation built-in, you can set up autoresponders to keep your new sign-ups engaging with your brand without the need for continuous effort on your part.
Related: Compare email marketing software and find out more details about each platform.
Email Lists Top Tips
A few email marketing tips include, keeping your email list up to date. Remove email addresses that continue to bounce to save costs on email send limits and increase your email statistics.
Segment your lists into new sign-ups and existing sign-ups, or try reengaging with those that haven’t opened your emails in a while, testing proven subject lines that can help turn an ignored email into a selling point.
Capitalize on your traffic now by actively trying to grow your list to help save yourself in the future if factors outside of your control affect it.
FAQs>
Why is building an email list important for business growth?
An email list allows you to reach interested customers directly, promote offers, share updates, and drive conversions, leading to sustainable business growth.
How can an email list help increase customer loyalty?
By providing valuable content, exclusive offers, and personalized communication, an email list helps build trust and keeps customers returning to your business.
What are the benefits of email marketing over social media?
Unlike social media, email marketing lets you connect directly with subscribers, control your messaging, and enjoy higher conversion rates with personalized content.
Is it necessary for small businesses to have an email list?
Yes, an email list is essential for small businesses as it provides a cost-effective way to reach and engage customers, even on a limited budget.
How can I build an email list from scratch?
Start by offering valuable lead magnets (e.g., e-books, discounts) on your website, using sign-up forms, and promoting your email list on social media platforms.
