Top SMB categories for email marketing services

SMBs choose email as their most important source of marketing, according to a 2018 survey by Borrell & Associates.

However, many local businesses use email to communicate with their existing customers only. This is typically a very small list, and very few have more than 1,000 email names.

SMBs clearly want help and are even more impressed when local media can provide exact targets - age, income, behavior and levels of interest - around a specific zip code or neighborhood.

So where is the low-hanging fruit for media offering to sell these email marketing services?

While all categories are buying email, Site Impact, the largest white-label back-end provider of email marketing services for some 2,000 local media companies, says there are seven basic categories where email marketing is a “must have”:

1. Retail

In Borrell and Associates’ 2018 study of 151 companies, SMB retailers (34%) were most likely to use email for marketing.

This year, retailers are boosting sales with email marketing that replicates messages sent on Facebook, via signage and traditional media. Another subcategory are retailers who have online stores or a regional footprint combining messaging that’s reaching people near store locations, and with the right age, income and behaviors.

2. Health care

22% of health care companies in the Borrell study said they use some form of email marketing.  This year the category is buying larger campaigns that take advantage of email’s ability to target by age and behavior, such as finding new mothers for the obstetric ward, or people at the right age for hip and knee replacement surgeries. Dentists are especially interested in families and neighborhood targeting.

3. Advertising agencies

While many agencies already have access to programmatic buys, finding local opted-in email is a more difficult challenge.Partnering with a white label service such as Site Impact allows media to supplement owned-lists on the back end, with a larger database of some 145 million opt-in names, and better targeting capability.

4. Automotive

The data sets from Site Impact in the automotive category are especially robust and automotive dealers were buying more in the first quarter of 2019. If a European auto dealer wants to target, say, owners of older BMW for a new $300 a month lease program, a sales representative can find individuals within 100 miles who have a BMW older than 5 years and an income of $100,000 plus from the Site Impact dashboard. Clicks to the VDP, Vehicle Detail Page, from email, are highly valued.

5. Politics

There are plenty of good reasons for all media to add email to their political bundles over the next year and a half. Television stations will sell-out and need more audiences and more highly targeted products. Newspapers, which surpassed radio stations in political spend for the first time in 2018, can increase the buys via adding owned, and targeted email audiences. Radio, which has only a limited online audience, can use email to create a stronger digital buy. At stake is a staggering $11 billion that will be spent by 2020 campaigns.

It is not too soon to start: Political spending is starting early this year, since democratic presidential nominees are already battling for name recognition to get on the June 2019 debating stage. Contact John@johnkimballgroup.com for a complete list of contacts for national and local candidates and PACs. For email counts in your area by party and affiliation, contact Brandon@siteimpact.com.

6. Finance, construction and real estate

Of the top seven categories for email markeating, finance, construction and real estate have the highest ROI. When it comes to selling loans, houses and construction, opt-in names and emails of people in the right neighborhoods have huge value. Look especially for new construction, brokers and agents farming high-end neighborhoods, and expanding products like manufactured housing that have an exciting story to tell if they can reach the right people “one-on-one.”

7. Arts and entertainment

Finally, the seventh key category that tops thie list is arts and entertainment events. This category has always relied on email marketing and that is even more true today. Event producers have time-sensitive urgency, and media own a ready “leads list” from their calendar section, plus a history of seasonal event promotions.Evvnt, a national calendar listing service, now partners with Site Impact to fill email promotion orders at scale, “behind the scenes” (the contact for a demo on revenue-generating calendars is Richard@evvnt.com). Pay special attention to destination events like festivals and conferences that are looking for out-of=area lists to supplement their media buy.

Keep this list handy, and remember that the key obstacle for companies who want to use email marketing is time (Borrell, 2018): Time to write, design and send email. Media companies that master email products provide a “win-win” service and create a new revenue stream.

For a demo of opt-in email lists in your area available to sell for these categories, contact Brandon@siteimpact.com.