Is email marketing a priority for your San Diego business? Do you assume that it will take too much time to set up and furnish with content only to find that the results are few and far between?

With the right email marketing software, your small business could be reaching more customers in San Diego and beyond.

Finding the best email marketing solutions for your business can take time, especially if you are not sure what features you are looking for. We’ve done the legwork for you, identifying five email marketing solutions that are tried and tested. However, we not suggesting that one of these is the perfect fit for your business but we can certainly help you find the right package for your email marketing needs.

#1 Constant Contact

With a fantastic San Diego email marketing package, the likelihood of your emails ending up in someone’s spam folder is reduced thus your efforts are not wasted. With Constant Contact, you would not only be investing in the fastest-growing email marketing service in the world but also one that is considered to be the easiest to use.

In terms of beginner-friendly software, this is certainly one of the best too. As well as easy to manage email lists and contacts, there are also templates to use as long with a marketing calendar to use.

As you would expect, there are tracking and reporting tools too, perfect for keeping an eye on how well your email marketing campaigns are doing. Tapping into your growing social media following is easy too with sharing tools, as well as more complex abilities such as tapping into social media ads and more.

Great for any small business to get to grips with the basics of email marketing, we are more than happy to work with any San Diego business and the Constant Contact platform.

#2 Drip

Different email marketing software provides different solutions and so four out e-commerce clients, as well as bloggers, the Drip platform could be the perfect platform.

As well as making personalization easy, this platform also connects well with both WordPress and WooCommerce sites. Adding sign up forms is easy meaning capturing more leads is effortless.

With Drip, the option to target groups of customers is easier, something that many people feel sets this platform apart from the others. There are marketing automation tools that lead to smarter email marketing, something that every small business needs to convert people to customers via email.

#3 Convertkit

Useful and incredibly powerful is how this platform has been described, something that appeals to many small business users.

Along with a 14-day trial, there are other features to this platform that make it a popular choice. If you know what you are doing when it comes to email marketing, have your strategy, plan and content ready, then this is software is certainly worth a second glance.

Essentially, its power lies in the fact that email sign up incentives can be an offer, bringing you more potential leads and prospects.  It also offers the ability to segment email address between those people who are already customers and those who aren’t, essential for personalised email marketing campaigns.

It is also a platform that comes with great support from the ConvertKit team. If you produce a lot of content and have an active, vibrant blog as part of your SEO drive for your San Diego business than this may be the powerful platform that continues to drive traffic and prospects your way.

#4 AWeber

It may be on the oldest email marketing platforms on the block but it is still keeping ahead of its younger rivals. If you are a growing business and feel that you will soon make the step from small to medium-sized business, you’ll need an email marketing system that scales with you.

As well as being the preferred choice of many businesses, it connects seamlessly to WordPress, as well as having a range of email templates, you’ll have access to list management tools, autoresponders and detailed tracking insights with in-built tracking tools.

Support services are great too, from phone support to excellent online articles, AWeber comes with a 30-day free trial and is also one of the best-priced options out there at the moment, perfect for the small business to get to grips with email marketing.

#5 SendinBlue

A European based company, this platform is growing fast and hotly tipped for big things, something that many businesses find attractive, especially if you want to be using the latest tools and trends in your email marketing campaigns.

An extremely easy to use platform, users are impressed by the creative and engaging emails they are able to complete using the platform. Like many other platforms, it uses the ‘drag and drop’ system for adding items in e-newsletters and the like, meaning that it is not just easy to use but hard to get wrong!

However, one aspect of SendinBlue that sets it apart is the use of algorithms to determine when the best times to send your emails.

You can use the free platform, but every email sent will have their branding on or you can start with the paid version from $25 a month.

Is email marketing right for your business?

Not every business owner is convinced by San Diego email marketing, more so in the current climate of tighter privacy controls and concerns over how data is used and shared, possibly without permission of the data holder.

Email marketing does work IF you use data with sensitivity if you personalise emails (tailoring emails to what customers want) and create impressive, engaging content sent at the right time. Sound like too many variables to hit? Not with Above The Fold! Whether you are a B2B or B2C San Diego small business, the team is here to create email marketing campaigns that get results. Maybe the question should be, can you afford not to market via email?

A marketing funnel is a journey from how people find your business to becoming customers. Creating a marketing funnel is, in essence, about answering a series of questions. Get this right, and a marketing funnel will become one of the most important tools for any small business in San Diego.

Step 1 – Analyse your current marketing funnel

Creating a marketing funnel doesn’t have to be overly complex but it is important to have an understanding of the process. When you identify the current process, you identify gaps. And this is important because where there are gaps, you are losing customers.

Answer the questions how do your customers find you, what do they do next and how do they buy?

Step 2 – Decide what on the end goal of your marketing funnel

Surprisingly, you may think, it is isn’t a natural assumption that the end goal of your San Diego marketing funnel will be ‘making sales’. It could be that you want email addresses for your direct email marketing campaign or book a call to discuss your services and so on.

Without an end goal, your marketing funnel will not taper to an action meaning that potential customers and leads simply swirl around the wide rim of the funnel and then drift away.

Step 3 – Plan your marketing funnel

For many small businesses in San Diego, this is the difficult step because unless you have a finite understanding and knowledge of the funnel process, actually knowing how to put a funnel into practice can be difficult.

You start by looking at a specific starting point, such as your website. You want to ask questions such as how do people find your website? When they arrive on your website, how will you determine what they are looking for and so on?

With an end goal in place, you have something to aim for and thus, you can create a funnel accordingly. For example, if the marketing funnel end goal is to swell your email database contacts, you would create a sign-up pop up for people to join your mailing list.

You might also want to create another pop up for later on in their browsing to remind them to sign up. You may want to offer an incentive and so on.

When it comes to designing and implementing a successful marketing funnel, you want to answer three key questions;

1. Does the method of attracting customers accomplish what it was designed to do?
2. Is there something putting customers off?
3. If someone shows an interest, where does the marketing funnel lead them?

Step 4 – Prioritising the marketing funnel

Marketing funnels only work if they hit the spot and not just once, but time and time again. From converting people into customers to getting more traffic to your website, there are many different goals and paths that a marketing funnel can lead people through.

But for any funnel journey to be a success, there are key components that must be prioritised;

• Is your website up to scratch? – if your website is lacking in content, strong call to actions and has a flow that is stilted and not logical, then you will be losing people before they have even entered the funnel. Prioritise getting the basics right.
• Do you follow up? – so someone hops along to your website and signs up to your e-newsletter… now what? Do you send a welcoming email? In other words, follow up is an important part of the marketing funnel, a chance to showcase your small business brand to a potential customer. 
• Adding fuel to the process – just because a customer is in the marketing funnel doesn’t mean that they will automatically buy or follow you. You still need to add fuel to the marketing ‘fire’ and that means making sure that people don’t forget who you are. This doesn’t mean bombarding people but linking and using other marketing processes such as social media ads, pay per click advertising and so on.

Step 5 – Tracking results

Keeping track of the numbers can hound your every moment or provide you with information that is either valuable or nonsensical. We can become hung up on numbers, becoming obsessed with watching the hit counter or the like button counter increasing.

On one hand, you need to treat the numbers with caution but on the other, you need to understand the information they are giving you. A marketing funnel should come with its own data.

It should tell you how many people are filtering through each stage of the funnel. What they may not tell you is why customers are stalling at a certain stage and not making through to the final end goal, whatever you have set hat to be.

It is highlighting there is a problem and one that needs to be fixed. It could be a simple case of what the customer needs to do next is not clear or the call to action is not strong enough.

From monitoring increased hits on the website to understanding bounce rate, to watching your email database grow to making more sales – your end goal will determine which statistic means the most – understanding the broader picture of marketing metrics will see you avoid costly mistakes.

Step 6 – Book Above The Fold for a FREE consultation

Frankly, marketing offline and online in an increasingly competitive marketing place is daunting. For a San Diego business like yours, you know that not marketing your San Diego business is not an option but you also have one eye on the marketing budget. You need to spend your marketing budget in the right place at the right time and aim ads and the like at the right people.

There are a lot of variables to get right which is we offer a free consultation. We look at your current marketing strategy and plans, how well your marketing funnel is functioning and give you an idea of how we can make more from all your marketing efforts, as well as introduce a few new ones. Now nothing is holding you back – give the team a call today (or send us an email!).

Digital marketing encompasses the many different channels your business could utilise to meet the needs of customers. Contrary to what you may think, San Diego digital marketing is not just about selling but about engagement and interaction too.

Why both with digital marketing?

As a small business, there are many pressures on your time, resources and budget. The world of digital marketing can seem vast, overwhelming and complex. With the right support from an expert digital marketing agency in San Diego, however, you can grow the marketing avenues you use and grow results too.

From maximizing SEO to pay-per-click adverts to email marketing, digital marketing opens up a whole new landscape for all business, but especially for the start-up and the smaller business too.

But what trends are coming our way in terms of digital marketing in 2019? How can a small business utilize them? And how do trends relate to a business whose customers are located in the same town, city or county?

#1 Artificial intelligence

Does this phrase make your hair stand on end or do you understand that come 2019, this will be a tool you can use for your small business with great effect?

Artificial intelligence is almost like an automated answering system but via your website. You’ll have seen this on websites – it is the live chat facility that pops up, asking if you have any questions or ‘how can we help you today?’.

Relatively inexpensive and easy to manage, customers realize that these live chat facilities are a way of breathing life into the FAQ section, almost. Customers tend to ask the same type of questions when looking to buy products or services, so why not automate this with artificial intelligence?

Available 24/7, you’ll lose fewer customers as they will feel a greater sense of interaction. It also shows a level of professionalism too, something customers look for in ALL brands and businesses, large or small.

#2 Your website MUST be mobile-ready

We’ve been using smartphones for years and so it seems inconceivable that there are still websites out there that are not readable, accessible or usable when accessing them via a smartphone or tablet.

If you haven’t already done so, you must make your San Diego website mobile ready for 2019 and beyond. The simple truth is, smartphones are here to stay and with more than half of all organic searches coming from mobile devices, it pays to have a website that is agile and responsive in any format.

#3 Video will become increasingly important

Take a look at the success of IGTV – the video format on Instagram – and you will see just how important video has become. But in 2019, as a digital marketing tool, it is expected to become even more popular and important.

However, like most things, there were a set of rules developed when it came to ‘going live’ or creating videos to attract attention and custom. For example, the shorter the better was a golden rule for video, as was don’t put a call to action in as this puts people off.

However, it seems that the rulebook is being ripped up, something we think rules should be all about! Videos can be everything from instructional to a marketing tool or just a bit of fun.

Movement on a website and on social media is important – it attracts attention and we like nothing better than being able to see or visualize a business. It breeds familiarity with a buyer, something that can prove lucrative to a business.

You can also utilize the power of video to make the most of your brand’s geographical location. Digital marketing is not just about selling on the web but about selling locally too, picking up a local following and so on.

There is nothing to say that as part of your marketing, you can’t showcase your locality and the beauty of it…

#4 Influencer marketing will be bigger

In every industry, there are people who are considered experts. On social media and other sites, there are people who are considered experts in your field. Collaborating with them can be beneficial to you both.

It is not just about advertising, but about gaining traction in your industry. With the right people at the right price point, you could introduce your product, services and brand to a whole new audience.

Or by hooking up with a social media influencer, you could affirm to customers that your brand is the place to go.

Effectively, influencer marketing is the digital equivalent of ‘word of mouth’. Millennials, for example, are seven times more likely to buy from a brand if their products are recommended or highlighted by an influencer.

This comes at a cost and so don’t try to be clever and ask for free marketing in exchange for a few products. This is likely to backfire. Influencer marketing in San Diego or indeed anywhere needs to be managed so that it is beneficial to both and not just one-sided.

#5 Data collection will become a bigger issue…

… even though it is already becoming a hot potato that no one wants to take a firm hold of. In Europe, the GDPR rules are making their presence felt and for any business that does business with EU based customers, GDPR needs to be followed – or businesses can face a hefty fine.

But the data brands collect from customers or people who come across their website is a big issue, no matter where you live. Who gains access to it and why is a growing concern too.

Digital marketing brings huge rewards but it needs to be done ethically, with the minimum amount of data collected by your on customers, clients and followers, if you need to collect data at all.

Why stay on top of digital marketing trends in 2019

If you don’t, you risk falling behind your competition. And when you fall behind, it takes twice the effort, time and resources to catch up and then more again to get back in front.

What you need is a customized digital marketing strategy, producing bespoke solutions for your San Diego business. Above the Fold Agency can help with all aspects of San Diego digital marketing for 2019, from creating a strategy to planning the best way to get results for your small business.

Contact us today to receive a free digital marketing consultation for your business.