Maybe you've heard about how companies have used email marketing to grow their business. And now you want to do the same.
In the broadest sense, email marketing is just sending marketing content directly to your prospects’ inboxes. If you’re a local business, however, you may run into a common problem: Almost every email marketing success story you’ve ever heard comes from a large company with customers all over the world.
So how can a local business replicate this email marketing afghanistan whatsapp number data 5 million success? To make a sale, you need to target people in your zip code area or at least nearby. This doesn’t always translate to global target audience strategies.
Luckily, there are many email marketing strategies that local businesses can utilize. In this guide, we will explore local email marketing and some simple strategies that you can use to grow your small business.
Summary
What is local email marketing?
Creating a local contact list
Writing Emails for Local Email Marketing
Launch a local email marketing campaign
What is local email marketing?
Local email marketing can be very effective
Local email marketing is a method of reaching local customers via email to increase sales. While this may seem obvious, there are some big differences between local and “traditional” email marketing that even the most well-intentioned marketers can overlook.
Local Email Marketing vs. Traditional Email Marketing
Local email marketing may not seem like a huge departure from traditional email marketing, but it can be surprisingly different.
While many elements are effectively the same (building contact lists, etc.), how they are constructed and used makes a difference. However, different target audiences and goals require different strategies than a traditional email marketing campaign.
Here are some key differences that set local email marketing apart.
Local Source Contacts: Collecting email subscribers isn’t as easy in person as it is online. While you can still grow local contacts through your website (especially if you leverage local SEO) or social media, you usually need to collect them in person, such as at events and conferences. We’ll cover some strategies for doing this in the next section.
Smaller Contact Group: You’ll also be working with a smaller contact list than you might use in a traditional email marketing campaign. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: if anything, a smaller list of contacts who are already familiar with your business makes email marketing even easier.
Greater Personalization: A smaller contact group also makes it easier to send targeted emails, effectively driving conversions and increasing ROI. Instead of sending the same generic email to all of your contacts, you can send personalized emails to different contacts based on their previous interactions with your company.
Announcements, not ads: But wait, isn’t the whole point of email marketing to advertise? While that’s true, local email ads should take a slightly different form than those sent by large companies to thousands of recipients. While your emails will vary, they’ll likely lean toward in-store sales and events rather than product-specific information.
Benefits of Local Email Marketing
While local contact searches and smaller email lists may seem limiting, they offer many benefits. Here are a few.
Stronger Customer Relationships: Let’s face it: No one likes to receive marketing material. However, when they do, people want to feel appreciated and seen by the brands they love. Big email marketing campaigns can lose sight of this, so local email is inherently much more personal. With more personal email communications, you’ll build much stronger customer relationships.
More sales per email: Stronger customer relationships also lead to more sales. With trust and value already established, your contacts and customers are more likely to convert (and purchase) after reading your emails. In-store events and targeted emails can also add an extra boost.
Higher ROI: Email marketing already provides a huge return on investment (ROI), with a 2019 study showing a return of $42 for every $1 spent . Since local contacts are more likely to convert and emails are virtually free to send, local email marketing can further increase your ROI.
Increased Customer Traffic: Promoting in-person events and promotions increases sales and store traffic. With more people showing up, you’ll see more in-person traffic, engagement, and sales.
Better understanding of customer preferences: Since the majority of your email marketing will result in sales and in-store activity, you can directly gauge your customer preferences based on traffic spikes and dips. For example, if you find that a specific event or sale tends to bring in more customers, you’ll be able to capitalize on that in the long run.
Creating a local contact list
Keep your contact list clean
When you start your local email marketing initiative, you may find that the traditional email strategy of building a contact list won’t work. You can’t just find someone who is interested in what you sell; they have to be both interested and local.
One way to overcome this problem is to develop creative ways to add people to your contact list when they visit your store. If they are visiting your store, it is obvious that they are local (or at least likely to return).
Let's use a wine shop as an example of how you might get visitors to sign up for your list. You might host a wine tasting event. You might ask people to sign up for your email newsletter to get a taste.
Or do the tasting for free, but offer an extra discount on a bottle of wine for customers who sign up for your newsletter.
The point here is that getting people to sign up for your list will probably take longer than simply asking them at checkout. It's likely that getting people to sign up for your list will be a trade of favors, but there's nothing wrong with that, and it will be worth it in the long run.
