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Email Marketing for Small Businesses

Businesses today take advantage on many tools and resources available to them to capture, communicate and, sometimes, please their customers. One of the most mentioned tools in managing customer relations is email marketing. But I notice that most of the time when I talk to small business owners or friends who want to create a…

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Businesses today take advantage on many tools and resources available to them to capture, communicate and, sometimes, please their customers. One of the most mentioned tools in managing customer relations is email marketing. But I notice that most of the time when I talk to small business owners or friends who want to create a business website to promote their products, projects or services via email they automatically tend to think this is one more expenditure that at the moment they can’t afford.

When it is totally true that email marketing means adding expenses, and many marketing businesses have offers all over the internet to help you promote your business for a monthly fee, however, there are simple ways that can be implemented in order to manage email marketing at a basic but professional level, and a reasonable cost you can afford. One way that I always consider first and actually recommended to people who contacted me to know more about email marketing, is using HTML templates to be sent through your email account (it works with gmail, hotmail, aol, and actually with facebook accounts too).

How does this work? It is easy. I need to tell that you should feel confident enough to immerse yourself in HTML coding – this is not of a big deal. You can really learn the basic things around most frequent html uses for email communications online – you can read more about it here.

    These are the common steps I use to follow in order to start working with email marketing using newletter archived files.

  • Find a HTML template that relate to your needs. A template that you can customize as you wish.
    Hubspot shared a nice article that can guide you on finding effective newsletter and email letter template pages.
  • Redesign that template to match your website, or have someone to do it and show you later how to edit it for future uses.
  • Make sure you upload that new template in a folder inside your website – an exclusive folder you creates for that purpose- so every time you need to modify or update the content or your next email marketing campaign you just refer to it.
  • Save as a ‘new file’ after finishing working on those changes. Every new file modification you made need to be “saved as” and named correctly for future references. This way you always have an original file backed up, and a copy of as many email templates you created. To see how people will receive and see your email, try sending it to yourself first: copy the whole HTML content that this file provides and paste it in your email account new message or compose area. Sometimes you may need to work inside the HTML tab, if your email account provides one, in order to function properly. Make the necessary changes to improve the look and display.

When this technique may be so basic, or sounds easy, it actually serves a great use when you are working under tight budget, however doesn’t allow you to keep track of statistic, users clicked links reports, etc, something that lots of the email marketing companies offer.

I’ll try to upload a mini video about how you can do this in a couple of weeks if time allows me.