Blogging

According to the newest Small Business Marketing Health Check report from Hurwitz, the top business challenge for small businesses is by far attracting and retaining customers. As a result, most small businesses are turning to digital marketing channels. Over 70% of small businesses surveyed are using social media channels like blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, while nearly 50% are using email marketing techniques.

The question the report poses is, how can we integrated social media efforts with email marketing to meet the challenge of attracting and retaining customers?

The best welcome email I’ve ever received

As you may have noticed, I recently revamped my website. In doing so, I added a new search service I’ve been meaning to look into called Lijit.

I first heard about Lijit through a fellow blogger, Grace Boyle, who works at the company. Several of my online friends were also using Lijit, so it was a service I definitely wanted to learn more about. My biggest question was, “Why use this instead of Google Search?”

My question was answered without me even asking, within a day of signing up for the service and setting it up on my site. Here’s the email I received from Grace:

You’ll notice I highlighted a few sections of the email that I thought were special:

1. A simple personal greeting – fairly basic, shows me that the company at least knows my name and cares to use it.
2. An entire introductory paragraph that is personalized with my website and exactly what I downloaded and when. Nope, this wasn’t a standard, automated email we send to everyone, so I read more closely.
3. Over 11,000 users. Social proof. This demonstrates I’m in great company, and making a smart decision by using Lijit.
4. SPECIAL SAUCE! I love special sauce. Let’s break it down:
   • This is a great, non-confrontational way to say “Hey, you missed some functionality we think you should use” without actually saying it.
   • “Don’t worry, we turned it on for you, because you are cool and we want to share our most useful secrets with you.” No need for me to do extra work to try it.
   • “The features will be live shortly.” A soft call to action to log in and see the new features.
5. “A really special tip from me as your friend (not the company), to optimize your usage of Lijit as a blogger.” More personalization, more connection. And I have to admit, the tip is a simple but powerful one that I’ll definitely be using!
6. “I hope all is well.” Email me back and let me know how you’re doing, even if you don’t have questions. We’re not just in business together, but we’re also friendly.

Overall, the email message was incredibly personalized and brought forward a ton of great features that told me why I should stick with Lijit.

So many companies tell me that their email marketing conversion rates are low (less than 10% opens), and my response is I wish more small businesses did this. Sure, it takes some time to send out personalized email messages to every new user, but it’s clearly a great investment. Besides, you can probably see how easy it would be to create a template and personalize it for different people, or even do something automated that’s a little more personalized.

UPDATE: MarketingSherpa just published research that shows the incredible benefits of putting more efforts into your email system.

Personalized email marketing pays

The facts don’t lie: automation is half as effective as relevant, personalized content.

Integrating email marketing with social media marketing

Some companies think this has to be hard, but I can’t think of anything easier. Grace is the perfect example of someone who integrates email marketing with social media, because she blogs, tweets, and creates personal relationships with lots of people online. While I did find out about Lijit from Grace, she never once reached out to me to push the product. She always looked to establish a personal relationship with her outreach, with the fact that she worked at Lijit a far afterthought.

6 months later, when I was doing a site redesign, I thought of how I should try the service. Grace’s social media interactions are what planted the seed in my mind, while her follow-up email is what will keep me using the service and probably turn me into a brand advocate.

If you want to better integrate social media with your email marketing,

• Hire people who already blog, tweet, and generally build relationships online to do your business development and/or community management.
• Let those people initiate contact when someone new signs up for the service. You can switch your new user to more general newsletters after the initial contact.
• Let them handle customer support from their personal accounts in addition to the company account. The roles are blending anyway.

Do these things to meet your goal of attracting and retaining customers.

How do you use email marketing? How do you integrate email marketing with social media?