The Marketing Assistant is a text message–based service that comes free with a Square Marketing subscription. We’ll send you suggestions for marketing your business as well as updates on how your campaigns are performing. If you’re not already using the Marketing Assistant or Square Marketing, you can sign up for Square Marketing and opt in to the Marketing Assistant.
Welcome. This is the first in a series of articles we’ll be sending through the Square Marketing Assistant tool. We’ll help you become more confident in marketing your business, beginning with the basics and advancing from there. By the end, you’ll be a pro at reaching out to your customers through email, Facebook, and more.
The first part of the series is focused on the basics of email marketing. Then we’ll cover how to market your business to new and existing customers on Facebook, and dive into more advanced email-related topics. We’ll also explore topics such as Instagram and text message marketing, so you’ll feel equipped to tackle whatever channel works best for your business.
Here’s how the educational article series through the Marketing Assistant works:
We’ll send the articles out every other week on Friday, to give you time to try out the tips and best practices we share with you.
If at any point you decide you want to stop receiving the educational articles, text PAUSE to the number you’re receiving them from (you’ll still receive other Marketing Assistant messages, and may get a few holiday-related educational articles as well).
When you’re ready to start reading them again, you can text RESUME. If you want to opt out of all Marketing Assistant messages altogether, text QUIT. To opt back in, visit the Marketing Assistant Settings page.
With that out of the way, let’s get into why you’re here: to learn how to be a better marketer.
You probably already know how important email marketing is for your business, but in case you need some extra convincing, 61 percent of consumers cited email as their preferred way to receive offers from brands. And 59 percent of businesses surveyed said marketing provided them with the biggest return on their investment.
We’ll get into these in more detail soon but here are a couple of tips to get you started:
- Collecting email addresses is critical to a successful email marketing program. This is important. In addition to automatically collecting opt-in from customers who purchase from your business and receive an emailed receipt, Square offers several additional tools to help you expand your list.
- It can be challenging to know how often to send email. As a general rule of thumb, sending two to three emails per month is probably a good start, and you can adjust based on feedback from customers and your open rates. Make sure you’re emailing once a month to stay top of mind and continue to build your customer relationships (be sure you’re sending information that’s useful to the majority of people who are receiving your campaign).
- Your subject line is critical. You want to create a subject line that is short and to the point, one that either highlights what a customer will get from opening and reading the email or creates suspense about what you’re offering. Avoid subject lines that customers may view as spammy — ones with words in ALL CAPS or lots of exclamation points (!!!!!), or that are overly sales-y (e.g., Last chance to buy this once-in-a-lifetime product).
You can learn more about Square Marketing and the Marketing Assistant tool here. We hope you enjoy the educational series, and we’re excited to see your marketing knowledge grow.
