How Small- And Medium-Sized Businesses Can Get Started With Email Marketing

No, it's not the trendiest or most glamorous tactic, and no, you're not likely to win "Ad Campaign of the Year," but good old-fashioned email marketing can offer a tremendous return with minor investments of time and money — especially for small- and medium-sized businesses.

In my experience helping such companies grow and maximize their sales and marketing efforts, I've found that email marketing is a great way to test and measure messaging strategies, new markets or new niches before ramping up investment in paid ad campaigns, content creation, etc. It's a direct line of one-on-one communication with the customer — there aren't any middlemen or ad platforms to pay for every message or impression — and there's a low barrier to entry, since most of us are already collecting prospects' and customers' emails. To start collecting and organizing them in a systematic way and using them consistently is often as simple as activating some features in the customer relationship management system and website you already have.

Creating marketing emails doesn't have to be expensive or time-consuming either. Here's how to get started:

1. Start with the basic messaging and call to action.

Your team may already be sending great emails out on a daily basis; they're just sending them one at a time. Gather together the most frequent types of client emails your team sends, and use the best of what you already have for the main body of your marketing emails. This is a great starting point.

Then, you can fine-tune your emails to be specific to the different segments of customers that you cater to. I've found that the most effective campaigns are based on an ongoing series of messages targeted to very specific niches.