Every day four billion people open email. While social media posting and paid advertising can play a significant role in a small businesses marketing campaigns, experts agree that emailing subscribers remains one of the best marketing tools available. Why? Emails go directly into your subscriber’s inbox and bypass the mysterious algorithms associated with social platforms and paid traffic. And if your business knows how to leverage the latest email marketing trends, you have an instant advantage over your competition. 

Here’s what you need to know about using email to grow your business. 

Nurture Audience Relationships through Email 

Beyond sales and promotions, email marketing is a great way to demonstrate your value to subscribers. Avoid sending too many emails just for the sake of ‘staying in touch.’ Instead, obsess about your customer’s problems and create email content that includes insider tips, trending news and ways to help your audience get ahead. Also, a smart website strategy should also include email. Whenever you add new content to your website, make sure to nudge subscribers with highlights and direct them to read more online. 

How often should you post new content to your website? According to the content marketing experts at HubSpot, it depends. They recommend first running a website audit to determine how often you should post. Then, it’s all about your goals. If your goal is to drive more traffic to your site, then you might need to post 3-4 times a week. If your strategy is to raise brand awareness, then publishing less frequently may work just fine. By pairing email marketing with website publishing you naturally increase traffic to your website without paid advertising.

Find Your Next Content Idea with AI

You’ve probably heard by now that AI is equipped to help you do everything from compose mysteries to finish your kid’s homework. But the truth is AI is only as smart as its user. Many businesses are finding that the best use of tools like Open AI’s ChatGPT and Jasper isn’t to do your work for you, but to do some thinking for you. Rather than starting with a blank page, try utilizing AI as a ‘content assistant’ that can pitch email subject lines or outline email content. 

Know How Privacy Changes Affect Deliverability 

Measuring the success of email marketing used to be a lot easier. However, a side effect of tech giants like Apple creating Mail Privacy Protection (MMP) to help users guard their personal information is that traditional metrics like open rates and click-to-open rates have become less reliable. As of June 2022, 89% of iPhone users adopted iOS 15 which gives users this option.

These updates don’t change the reality that email remains a highly effective marketing strategy. The difference is that you’ll want to look at other metrics such as ROI, list growth, email forwards, and unsubscribe rates to help determine what’s working and when to adjust. 

Turn Subscribers into Fans 

The reason people subscribe to your list varies, but we know that most subscribers are motivated by access to deals, shortcuts, rewards, discounts and hot tips. In other words, they love special treatment. 

You can nurture customer loyalty and repeat sales when you treat your email subscribers differently than everyone else. Rather than making special offers to everyone, reward email opens with exclusive opportunities. This strategy will also help you determine which sales are coming from email versus promotions running on your website, ads or social media posts. 

Are you growing your list? 

Your email marketing efforts are only as good as the health of your email list. To keep your list growing, make sure you have a variety of lead magnets designed to trade exclusive content or discounts for a person’s email address. After you have new subscribers added to your list, your email marketing strategy begins. Far more than a trend, you can kickstart your new email relationship with a series that both initiates and rewards new subscribers. Connect it all to automation, and you have a simple, reliable email marketing campaign to help you make more sales and grow your business.