Building a Small Business Online Presence

 Are you a Canadian small business who wants to maintain your online prospects?

EMAIL MARKETING AND NEWSLETTERS

 Email marketing utilizing newsletters makes up a large percentage of the way that businesses communicate with potential prospects and keep them informed.  Once someone has given you permission by  providing their email to you via your website or through other marketing mediums, this gives you with the opportunity to send them information through newsletters to keep your company front and centre in their mind.  It is important to only use this medium with prospects and customers who have given your permission or this is considered spamming. In Canada, there will soon be legislation to enforce this which include stiff fines.  You also need to make sure that you give the parties you send the newsletter the opportunity to unsubscribe, because continuing to send unwanted mail to parties even if they originally provided you an email can cause you a problem as well.  .

There are many software email newsletter packages available on the market to choose from with varying features and prices.  For a small business who will only use this medium once a month or so to  less than  a few thousand emails, there are packages that offer a free version of the software, such as MailChimp.   They all offer HTML templates that can be modified for your business.   The database online included in the software  keeps up with individuals that unsubscribe for you, so you do not send unwanted mail. They also offer widgets for subscribing that can be added to your website.  For your clients who do not have email that supports HTML, there will be a link in the email sending them to a website to view the newsletter.  

You want to make sure that the newsletters that you send are informative to the reader and they continue to keep them interested in your business and your products.  You should also make sure that there are links in the newsletter that bring them back to your website as well as you add and update content.  This is not a part of your online presence that is done in isolation, but is one of the key pieces that help support the others and keep your prospects and customers informed as new material is available.