Email Is Still Relevant! Are You Getting the Most from Your Email Marketing?

In an era of mobile this and social media that, it’s easy to think that email — the original online marketing channel — is becoming ineffective. But giving the inbox short shrift is short sighted. After all, approximately 182 billion emails are sent every day, according to The Radicati Group. Clearly, your customers spend tons of time reading their email, so it only makes sense to put your message where their eyes already are.

That’s why, in a June 2014 poll by Internet Retailer, almost 40 percent of respondents said email marketing was their most important investment. Even more compelling: 90 percent indicated that email produces “a positive return” on investment.

Here are some key considerations to help you get the most from effective small business email marketing:

1.    Know Why You’re Emailing: Retention, engagement and revenue generation are the three most popular reasons business owners use email marketing. “Pick the one or two things you want to focus on first,” says Christopher Lester (no relation to the author), vice president of sales for email marketing company Emma in Nashville, TN. “Instead of a monthly newsletter, spend time creating an incredible three-piece welcome series. Do email marketing, but do it right.”

2.    Leverage Existing Relationships: Email marketing is most effective when you use it to stay engaged with customers and clients you already know who have opted in to receive emails, according to Robbin Block, creative marketing strategist with Block Media & Marketing in Seattle, WA. “That means they're interested in hearing from you, no matter what the delivery mechanism,” says Block. “Take the time to build a solid list. There are many ways to do that: sign-ups, purchases, registrations, networking, phone calls, trade shows, etc. Otherwise, it’s spam.”

3.    Make It Work on Mobile: Data from the Knotice Mobile Email Opens Report show that in 2013, 45 percent of emails were opened on a mobile device, usually a phone. “Marketers that aren’t making sure their email sends are optimized for mobile are really missing out,” says Carrie Hill, co-founder of Ignitor Digital in Glenwood Springs, CO. “One study suggested that mobile email will account for 15 to 70 percent of email opens, depending on your target audience, product and type of email. Email and mobile are a match made in heaven.”

4.    Personalize It: Use an email marketing service that enables you to add a person’s name to the message, because this kind of personalization makes it more effective. When recipients feel the message is targeted at them, “they’re more likely to engage with the message and click through,” Hill says. Take it a step further by gathering information like birthdays and anniversaries, so you can reach out on those days with a special message. “This is a great way to remind your customers you care about them in their day-to-day lives,” she adds. “I have local REALTOR® clients who watch home-sale transactions and try to gather email addresses of new homeowners via opt-in to market local home improvement products and services to them.”

5.    Make and Keep a Schedule: “The biggest mistakes small businesses make are not sticking to a consistent schedule and failing to measure the results of each campaign and apply those learnings to the next one,” says Abigail Stock, founder and chief digital strategist with New York City–based Little Digital Co. “An easy way to ensure you hit send on time — every time — is to create a content calendar and plan ahead for what you want to say to whom and when. A simple spreadsheet will do. If you have some extra time, get two or three emails done in advance and schedule them to go out ahead of time. That way, you don’t have the excuse of being too busy in the future.” Don’t forget to add time to review and analyze each email’s performance, too.

These small business email marketing tips apply whether you’re using email to send a newsletter, a welcome message or deals and surveys.

“Email marketing isn’t a silver bullet — no marketing channel is — but it is one of the best tools in your marketing toolbox,” Lester declares. “I think we’re past the point of convincing people to try email marketing. It’s not even an option anymore. Everyone is being marketed to via email.”

by Margot Carmichael Lester, Staples® Contributing Writer

Branding 101 for Small Business Owners

Every business needs a brand, of course, but not every small business owner is adept at creating one. Fret not! We’ve outlined key small business branding elements to help you build or remake one for your endeavor.

What Is a Brand?

“A brand is what distinguishes one company or product from another,” explains Juily Gite, a design consultant forStaples® Design Services. “It is a promise to the consumer, communicating to the consumer what to expect when they buy from you; whether your brand is built on ‘fun’ or ‘easy to use,’ or ‘looking cool,’ it serves as a way to make the buying decision easier for a consumer faced with many choices. “A brand is the sum total of many activities and communications that communicate who you are, what you stand for and why you are different.”

What Are the Elements of a Brand?

• Logo: Your company’s logo is the most visible and consistent representation of your business and your brand, because it can appear anywhere from your front door to your Web site to your business card. Gite says it’s crucial to determine what your logo needs to communicate. “This will drive the design elements used, including graphic types, color and typography.” Then consider how you will use your logo. “Design is driven by usage. For example, if you’re printing the logo on the back of a package, you will want to make sure it reads well when reproduced on the packaging material and when small.”

• Colors: Colors influence people’s feelings and perceptions about your brand, so selecting the right hues is vital to branding your small business. “What kind of business are you in and are there colors that associate well with what you do?” asks Andrew Coulter, senior marketing director for MushKush Integrated Marketingin Kaysville, UT. Consider the feelings you want people to have about your business, like trustworthy, exciting, relaxed, luxurious, etc. There’s a color for every emotion. Adds Jon Baker, CEO of FodderTech in Sandy, UT: “Our systems use water to produce green sprouts, so naturally we chose green and blue.”

• Voice: Your voice is the “sound” of your business, a tone that resonates with your customers. “It needs to be based on who you really are, what your service or product really delivers,” Gite explains. “It needs to be consistent. You can’t try to build your brand on being easy to work with, and then have a complicated, hard-to-navigate website with a 10-question-long ‘Contact Us’ form.”

• Tagline: If it’s important to communicate what’s unique and different about you, you may want to create a tagline or slogan that quickly communicates with words how you’re different. “You immediately know which paper towel is ‘The Quicker Picker Upper’ and which coffee is ‘Good to the Last Drop,” Gite says.

• Messaging: Beyond a tagline, your brand message is a theme or two that drives your “story” and informs how you communicate in brochures, web copy, sales training, etc. “We sell a product that is both the same and different from what our competitors sell, so we’ve spent time building a message of ‘We have what you’re looking for and here is how we’ve improved it,’” Baker explains.

• Fonts: Typography reflects brand personality and can become iconic — think Coca-Cola or Disney. The fonts used in print and online materials should complement your logo while remaining legible. “Choose a font that’s easy on the eyes,” Coulter suggests. “I like to stick with fairly basic fonts. I had a former customer who insisted everything be done in the Papyrus font, but people get tired quickly of too much use of a novelty font.”

• Images: “The type and style of imagery are also important for communicating who you are,” Gite adds. Whether you use illustrations or photography, and color or black & white, will affect how consumers think about your brand. Distinctive images can also be a key differentiator in small business branding. Think about how different an Apple photographic image is from the Android cartoon robot, for example.”

What Branding Mistakes Should I Avoid?

• Working in a vacuum. Before you get too far along in developing your brand, get some feedback. “Reach out to friends and family who understand your business or product and the other options available in your market, and ask them if your brand communicates what they expect,” Gite suggests. “Use any informal research as a gut check, but don’t spend too much time or money on it.”

• Doing it yourself. Some things really are better left to a professional. “We’re engineers, not designers,” Baker laughs. That’s why he looked for a design partner to help with the company’s branding who “understands and is willing to get inside our business a little bit to understand what we want to accomplish. Someone who can articulate to us the rationale behind the design elements they used. And of course, someone who is accessible.”

• Neglecting your brand. Too many small businesses spend a lot on a logo, but neglect all the other elements that influence customer behavior. “Every business needs to be strategic and deliberate about defining what makes them different and why someone should buy from them. Otherwise, they won’t be successful,” Gite asserts.

Building and maintaining a strong brand is key to building a sustainable business. “You can’t sell without having a brand,” Gite concludes. “Whether or not you put in the effort to create and manage your brand, your customers will have a perception of you — if you leave it up to them to decide on their own what your brand is and what you stand for, you’ll have no control over your brand promise.”

Margot Carmichael Lester is a business writer and consultant, and the owner of The Word Factory, with offices in Carrboro, NC, and Seattle. An award-winning writer, she's a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Media and Journalism. In her free time, Margot loves to cook (and eat out), watch sports, travel and sit on the screened porch with her husband and two dogs.

What Brands Need to Do to Beat the 'Cheap' Perception

Whether customers perceive a product as “cheap” or “affordable” is crucial to its success in the marketplace. But if companies think they lack control of this perception, well, they are simply wrong.

There is, always has been and always will be a market for consumer products with relatively low prices. Even so, customers will shy away from or denounce those products if they determine them to be "cheap.” They will embrace products if they see them as “affordable.

However slight, the difference between “affordable” and “cheap” is real, and although it’s seemingly an intangible, subjective problem, companies can solve it with tangible marketing tactics that put the consumer first. Companies overcome the “cheap” perception when they build a strategy that emphasizes a product’s value proposition (what you pay for what you get) or quality-to-value ratio for a clearly defined consumer target.

When presented in this context, a product not only becomes affordable but it becomes approachable to the targeted consumers. On the other hand, if companies decide to market a product as a standalone solution whose chief attribute is its low price, then it becomes cheap and it appeals to no one.

If companies think about what product attributes are most important to their consumer target, they can emphasize those attributes and more successfully link high value to high quality, thus overcoming the “cheap” perception.

This is true across many consumer sectors and speaks to customers' natural reactions to product marketing. For example, Honda transformed its brand image in the 1970s and 1980s by focusing on building high quality cars with the right features at the right price for its core target. Today, Honda is seen not as “cheap” but as a smart purchase.

In addition, retail companies, such as Gap, have long emphasized value and quality over price in their marketing strategies. Gap’s current “Dress Normal” campaign gets it right. In a recent interview with AdAge, Gap’s Global CMO Seth Farbman appropriately summed up the company’s mindset, explaining, “What we need to reinforce is what has always been true, that even at full price, the quality and value and enduring style of Gap product is of high value. If the spots make the clothes look more expensive, great. They're not."

Farbman’s sentiments echo mine, and they resemble what the marketing teams I have worked with have set out to do, both during my tenure at Timex and now at EB Brands. A product’s price does not define it. Instead, if companies clearly tell the product’s value proposition story, price will become one of many secondary features and not the product’s headlining attribute.

To be successful in becoming relevant and approachable to target consumers, the product’s overall brand story must also be a part of a thoughtful, clear and consistent brand positioning. This will attract the target consumer and push the idea of "cheap" further into irrelevance. Affordability then becomes necessary, rather than optional, and ends up as a central strength in an effective marketing strategy, especially in tandem with a properly enforced high-quality, high-value brand story.

This is true from fashion to fitness. To illustrate my point, a recent survey conducted by Technology Advice reveals that one in five adults who do not use a fitness tracker cite concern over cost as the main reason. Along those lines, a much larger 57 percent of those who do not use a fitness tracker say they would be more likely to purchase one if it helped lower their insurance premiums.

The survey reveals a customer mindset that regards cost and dollars saved as essential elements to a purchase decision, which brings us back to a product’s quality-to-value ratio for target consumers. Within this framework, there is no room for the “cheap” perception to emerge in the first place.

In the end, companies that simultaneously provide quality and value should not feel trapped by the “cheap” perception. The game plan to beat it is out there. Honda has done it. Gap has done it. Smirnoff is doing it with their “Vodka for the Masses” campaign, which touts high quality vodka for everyone. Once again, in its approach to target consumers, a company’s focus on quality and value greatly outweighs the price.

No matter the product, if companies target consumers, they have the marketing tools to maintain a firm hold on their brand story. They just may not know it yet.

by Hererto Calves, EB Brands

Why Influencer Marketing Pays Off for Small Businesses

Small-business owners face a massive challenge when it comes to marketing their companies and products. Without the proper tools or experience, they can end up spending large budgets with no guaranteed return. 

The typical customer sees countless ads every day, across a huge array of channels. 

The chances of a small business successfully cutting through that noise are slim. The way small businesses thrive is through relationships, and influencer marketing could be the best option.

Word-of-mouth marketing is the oldest and most valuable way of convincing people to buy a product or service. Being encouraged and reassured by a trusted source has more value than any other sort of advertising. Social-media influencers have proven rapport with their followers, easily affecting the buying behaviors of those who subscribe to their feeds. 

With carefully chosen, highly relevant influencers, a small business owner can target the most relevant consumers for a fraction of the cost of traditional media. Here are some of the advantages:

1. Create a cost-effective campaign.

An influencer-marketing campaign is extremely flexible, meaning that your initial investment can be quite small and a successful program can immediately be scaled up.

2. Build brand loyalty fast.

A startup does not have the benefit of years of customer relationships and brand loyalty. By having an influencer create native content with your brand’s message, you can build equity with potential customers more quickly.

Thus, you leverage the longstanding relationship an influencer has with an audience based on a crucial pre-established trust. You are essentially being introduced to the person's followers with an implicit credibility: This gives a company a major advantage, especially when paired with the vital market research that social media can provide on consumers (from "likes," shares and comments). 

3. Achieve highly targeted advertising.

The traditional model of attempting to reach a large, broad audience can be very expensive and inefficient. With an influencer-marketing platform, you can create a highly targeted campaign by zeroing in on very specific variables, like the geography of consumers or an age group.

For instance, pairing with an influencer who has a dense following in a particular geographic location and a high concentration of millennial followers could make a campaign more focused and budget sensitive. 

My company, InstaBrand recently executed a campaign for a jewelry company to promote a highly curated collection for men. By carefully selecting key influencers on Instagram whose followings were most likely to appreciate the brand, the campaign resulted in a fourfold increase in online sales. Reaching the right people is sometimes far more important than reaching a lot of people. 

4. Return on investment is easily trackable.

With influencer marketing, return on investment is highly quantifiable. With a wide array of metrics available to your business, you can appraise the success of an influencer-driven campaign.

Follower acquisition is an important key performance indicator: A follower is essentially a potential customer who can be targeted and advertised to at no additional cost. A potential consumer is more likely to become a purchasing customer if he or she elected to hear from you.

You can then draw on a wide array of metrics to track the effectiveness of individual posts, seeing how well followers react to the content and if it translates to sales. Hashtags and promo codes let you monitor sales, usage and click-through rates, making them valuable indicators of a return on investment.

5. Create premium content without paying model or a photographer.

Content creation takes labor and resources from talented individuals, and a small-business owner might find it best to outsource this. Influencers are also major content creators, not just distributors. Pairing up with a fashion influencer will not only bring you marketing, but professionally produced photos that you can repurpose. 

Next time you’re considering traditional advertising for your small business, take a stab at influencer marketing and track the return on investment. You may be pleasantly surprised by the results.

by Eric Dahan

5 Roadblocks That Are Getting in the Way of Your Business

Entrepreneurship is the ultimate risk and reward dynamic.

Taking your business to the next level can be one of the most exciting things. When business is good, you have more control over your life. But reaching a plateauing or moving backward can prompt the most seasoned entrepreneur to pull out his hair.  

If you are going to get your business to the next level, you must aim to shatter some mental and physicalroadblocks that thwart your company's progress. 

1. Carrying a self-limiting belief.

Your mindset can be the biggest obstacle to overcome in your business. Many people carry around a false belief about themselves that needs to be removed or improved. In business, you are the gateway to your company.

If you believe you can't do something, you can't and probably won't even try. Many times a great idea or product is stymied by an entrepreneur who can't change her mindset.  

The only way to conquer a self-limiting belief is by recognizing a negative mindset and taking action to overcome it. That way you can move when your mind is initially telling you not to. Time and persistence can overcome such shortcomings. 

2. Not hiring the right people.

Good employees can make your business sail smoothly, while bad ones might make you scratch your head and ask why you ever wanted to own a business. Without good people, you will need to micromanage things and you’ll burn out.  

Finding good employees requires you to shift your thinking. Hire slow, train them in detail and don't allow mediocrity to set in.

3. Mismanaging money.

When money is not properly allocated, your focus shifts from what you do best to worrying about bills. Enthusiasm and energy may be sucked out of you as you begin to wonder which bills to pay and which ones to put aside. There's no time to think about growing your business as your mind fills with worry. 

Pay attention to your cash flow in your business as well as your personal life. Expand your lifestyle slowly and leave a margin. It is always easier to push out than to contract. Control your dollars to leave your mind clear and remain focused on your business.   

4. Looking for a home run.

It is so tempting to swing for the fences with every action and pursue the one thing that will turn around your company.

But taking one big massive action and can end up with just having to sit back and wait to see if it worked or not. This turns the entrepreneur into more of a river gambler than a businessperson.

Small actions one after an another can culminate in a company's taking off. Successful businesses result from expending focused energy over time. Don’t be afraid of the monotonous base hits, but rather embrace them.  

5. Being out of balance.

When you run your own business, it's easy to be utterly consumed by it. Sleep, eat and work can be the entire life of a company owner. This imbalance is difficult to sustain.

Take time to live again! Set aside time to write down why you entered the business in the first place. You might end up recalling things like "I want to be able to work when I want to work" or "I wish to start a business so I can design my life.”

Remember that you do control how you fill your time and can be purposeful about maintaining a work-life balance.  

There will always be hurdles to overcome in business. These challenges are part of the fun when you are not consumed by them. You can overcome the difficulties along the way and take your business to the next level. Just keep climbing that mountain. 

by Zechariah Newman, Author, Coach and Speaker