As a small or medium-sized business, you have dozens of marketing tools at your disposal—some newer (like social media), some tried-and-true (like your website).

Social media is a fantastic way to reach a broader audience and build a community around your company. It’s also a great way to drive traffic to your website and capture email addresses for future one-to-one engagement. However, we shouldn’t forget that email marketing is still very powerful and effective.

How powerful and effective? Consider these stats:

• Email still delivers the highest return on investment of all direct marketing channels—a whopping $34.00 in sales generated for every dollar spent.
• Email drives the most online conversions.
• Email is second only to search for new customer acquisition.

Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about ways to reinvigorate your email marketing!

Build Your Email List and Benefit From Warm Leads
How do you grow your email list? By offering valuable content and incentivizing people to sign up. Offer your social media fans and followers exclusive content like eBooks, or use Facebook Apps, Contests and Giveaways as an incentive to capture email addresses.

Remember: you don’t own your social media channels, but you do own your email list. Social media networks can change the rules at any time, but once you create a connection with a customer or prospect, it’s yours.

Email is the most powerful tool for generating warm leads. It creates opportunities for follow-ups and closing deals. Be sure to include links to articles, videos, web pages and PDF downloads within your email, so you can track each user’s clicks and gain insight into their interests. Then, follow up via phone, or with additional emails containing more information, education or incentives.

8 Email Tips to Increase Engagement

Whether you handle your email marketing on your own or hire a service provider, you can benefit from implementing just one (or all) of these easy tips:

1. Personalize it: Personalized promotional emails had 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click through rates than non-personalized emails, according to a report from Experian Marketing.
2. Make it responsive: More consumers access email through mobile devices, so be sure your email is responsive and mobile-ready. It has to function perfectly and be readable whether it’s appearing on a smart phone, tablet or laptop.
3. Don’t over- or under-do it: Frequency is important. Don’t inundate subscribers with daily emails, but consider the effect of being too quiet as well: emails sent once per month actually generated the highest bounce rates, according a recent study. Don’t be a stranger! Also, consider consistency. Sticking with a schedule for your email marketing will help you stay organized and will make you look more trustworthy to customers.
4. Provide opt-in and opt-out options: Customers want to choose. Give them the option to choose the type of email they want to receive and how often they want to hear from you. Remind subscribers to add you to their address books, and immediately remove them if they unsubscribe.
5. Encourage a response: Wondering if anyone is listening to you? Find out with solid content that includes a call to action. Request feedback so you know exactly what your audience wants to hear from you about (industry news, special offers, new products).
6. Make it pop: Images are more interesting than text. Present your content in a colorful, customized template that reinforces your brand. And include images and videos to entertain your readers.
7. Time it right: Timing of emails is important. Most people open email between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. Emails that get noticed usually appear near the top, so time yours to arrive while your subscribers are checking their inboxes.
8. Fluff up your subject line: It’s simple: the subject line influences email success. It’s the headline the recipient sees before deciding whether or not to open it. Make it stand out from the clutter by making an offer, stating a benefit or piquing their interest.

Email marketing takes some effort, but it really pays off when you do it right! If it’s been too long since your business has put a real effort into your email marketing, there’s no better time than now to turn subscribers into leads, leads into customers and customers into brand fanatics!

1.DMA 2012 Response Rate Report
2.MailerMailer Email Marketing Metrics Report
3.Growing Your Business With Email Marketing