Challenges of Email Marketing for Small Businesses

posted by Ted on January 13, 2012

According to a survey, conducted by Hurwitz & Associates for Ontario-based email marketing service provider Campaigner (a solution of Software-as-a-Service communication services and solutions company Protus), almost half of North American small businesses use email marketing today.

Campaigner’s “State of Small Business Online Marketing Survey” found that 46% of small businesses surveyed rely on email marketing to help them find new customers, keep existing ones and grow their businesses. Hurwitz & Associates gathered responses from 259 North American businesses with 1 to 20 employees.

Furthermore the report reveals that 36% of the surveyed small businesses plan to start using email marketing in the coming year.

Despite the growing confidence in using email marketing, both current users and those that plan to use email marketing view spam as the biggest barrier or potential barrier to successful email marketing.

When questioned about their concerns in designing and executing email marketing campaigns, respondents reported the following top challenges:

1) Concerns that my customers will view email marketing as spamming
2) Too many email campaigns are filtered out by spam filters
3) Poor response rates

Survey respondents cited the following as their top criteria for choosing an email marketing provider:

1) Ease-of-use
2) Quality of customer support
3) Price

When asked more detailed questions about email marketing, small business owners cited the following as top benefits:

1) Inexpensive/effective way to reach out to new prospects and customers
2) Generates a fast response so I can tell if a campaign is working
3) Effective way to build customer loyalty

Newsletters, sales and promotional offers and announcements are the most common ways small businesses said they are using email marketing. But its uses, and benefits, are practically endless.

Tags:direct marketing,email marketing,opt-in,small business,subscriber