When you’re running a small business, time is money. Because your time runs tight, you need to focus on marketing activities that generate the greatest ROI. If you don’t have an airtight email marketing strategy, you’re probably leaving money on the table and wasting time. Small business owners can’t afford to let that happen.

According to outsourced CMO and marketing consultancy Hawke Media, email strategies drive anywhere from 20 to 25 percent of total online revenue. The reason so many small business owners miss out is that they’re often focused on short-term sales. While this is understandable, it doesn’t have to be an either-or situation.

Email marketing is one long-tail strategy that can magnify the impact of your other marketing activities. When used effectively, email can convert leads into customers, customers into repeat buyers, and repeat buyers into brand evangelists. You’d be amazed at how much more effective even one brand evangelist can be as compared to dozens of paid advertising campaigns.

It takes time to build campaigns that convert, yes, but once you get them set up, you can lean on automation to do the heavy lifting for you. Listed below are five smart ways to use email marketing to generate more online sales.

1. Create a compelling offer.

Most often, when a potential customer visits your website, she isn’t yet ready to buy. She may have clicked on an ad or stumbled across your business via social media. More than likely, she is probably at the beginning of the customer journey. If this individual simply clicks away, you lose the chance you had at turning her into a customer.

To keep this from happening, you need to develop a compelling offer that entices her to sign up for your email list. This is sometimes called a “lead magnet.” A lead magnet can be anything — a coupon, a quiz, a 14-day trial, a mini-course — but it should be closely related to your product or service, and it must deliver value. You want whatever you offer to be compelling in and of itself, regardless of whether the recipient decides to purchase your product or service.

It might help to think of your lead magnet as something akin to the free-sample stations you frequently find at your local Costco.

The whole point is to give your customer a taste of your full-priced offering so she comes back for more. All too often, though, businesses make the mistake of offering a watered-down version of their platform or a “video course” that’s little more than a 30-minute pitch. Worse than being ineffective, these can actually create a lasting negative impression of your brand.

Instead, your lead magnet should provide a satisfying experience that gives potential customers real value in exchange for their email address. Providing no-strings value is something that makes them more likely to come back to you to purchase your full-priced product or service.

2. Nurture potential customers through the use of automated campaigns.

Once an individual signs up for your email list, it’s your job to maintain her interest so that she’ll become a customer. The best way to do this is to deliver value in every single email — whether that comes in the form of information, inspiration, entertainment, or a special offer. You shouldn’t ask someone to make a purchase as soon as she gives you her email address. People see this as tacky. Instead, your emails should follow a pattern of “give, give, give, ask.”

You can automate the process of nurturing potential customers throughout their lifecycle. This can be accomplished through a drip campaign or a nurture campaign.

Drip campaigns are set up to send “drips” of content at scheduled intervals to every person on your list. These are great for keeping your business top of mind and for letting current and potential customers know about special offers.

Nurture campaigns are automated series of emails sent that are based on a customer’s behavior, such as email opens and clicks. Nurture campaigns are more sophisticated because they allow you to segment customers and tailor the content they see based on their interests, behavior, and stage in the customer journey. If, for example, a customer downloads an SEO whitepaper and then clicks on a link to a post about the upcoming Google update, you might send her an offer for a free phone consultation to help improve her website.

3. Gather data on your customers and their biggest pain points.

Creating valuable content for your email campaigns doesn’t just benefit your customer base. Anytime someone signs up for your lead magnet, opens an email, or clicks on a link, she is giving you valuable information. By testing a variety of lead magnets and creating an ongoing stream of helpful email content, you can learn a great deal about your customers’ pain points, aspirations, and price sensitivity.

The companies with the best email marketing strategies don’t just have one lead magnet. They have several that appeal to different types of customers with different challenges.

Take HubSpot, for instance. The inbound marketing software giant has free e-books, courses, templates, and kits that all address a specific pain point. Hubspot can discern which topics are trending simply by analyzing the number of downloads for a specific resource. By testing different lead magnets, you too can find out what your customers need the most help with.

Once you begin sending emails, you can test different subject lines and email content to see what resonates with your audience. Say you’re a health brand with two different posts about superfoods. If significantly more customers click through to read your post on “foods to boost immunity” than your post on “foods to improve gut health,” you might conclude that your customers are most concerned about staving off illness. Being armed with this information will help you tailor future messaging.

4. Upsell your customers and encourage repeat purchases.

As soon as a customer places an order, you have a perfect opportunity to upsell her or begin encouraging repeat purchases. Momma’s Shop, a small online business that sells maternity and nursing apparel, leverages this tactic by sending an email offer to add an item to order at a deep discount immediately after a purchase is made.

These types of upsell offers are extremely compelling because a customer just made the decision to buy and is still in that purchasing mindset. If the upsell offer is targeted intelligently and dovetails nicely with what the customer has already purchased, you increase the likelihood that your offer will pique their interest.

Even if a customer doesn’t convert on the upsell, you still have future opportunities to encourage repeat purchases. You can send a special offer a week or two later or an email introducing the customer to a complementary product or service. She may be so satisfied with her original purchase that she wants to try something else.

5. Ask for referrals and reviews.

One often-overlooked email marketing strategy is to get your existing customers to sell on your behalf. Once you have a happy customer, you can use email to turn her into a brand evangelist. An easy win is to send an automated follow-up email asking customers about their purchase experience. This can be as simple as clicking a star rating or a thumbs up/thumbs down within the body of the email. There’s a real art to demonstrating respect for your customer’s time and simultaneously asking them for feedback.

Whenever you interact with a happy customer, prompt her to leave a review.

According to a survey by Bright Local, nine out of 10 people read online reviews and 84 percent of consumers trust them as much as a friend’s recommendation. You can also incentivize customers to refer your business to a friend by offering them a special discount. This can magnify word of mouth to generate more sales.

When small business owners are pressed for time and have limited bandwidth, it can be all too easy to focus on short-term sales. But email marketing is an investment in your business that pays dividends over months and years. It takes time to set up effective campaigns, but think of that time as an investment in your future growth. Once you have your automated sequences in place, they can continue to generate sales 24 hours a day and increase the satisfaction (and lifetime value) of every customer.

From the moment an ad campaign goes live, marketers start tracking metrics like engagement, click-through rates, and customer acquisition costs (CAC) to gauge what their next strategic move should be.

If your campaign is delivering great results, you might put more ad spend behind it for a longer period of time. If the results are subpar after a few days or a week, you might nix the campaign altogether and rethink your approach.

You want to save as much money as you can while still converting more customers, especially when budgets are tight. The goal here is to keep CAC low, but this is often easier said than done.

In this post, we’ll share five ways that you can lower production and distribution costs for your video ad campaigns. That way, you can create quality ad content without overextending your budget and racking up unnecessary costs.

1. Re-share User-Generated Content

Did you know that campaigns with user-generated content can generate 29% more conversions than those without?

By encouraging current customers to create and share videos that endorse your business, you’re able to:

• Put your business in front of new and diverse audiences, increasing brand awareness
• Improve brand reputation and consumer trust
• Build up a content reservoir of videos that you can re-share anytime
• Save money, time, and resources

People trust the recommendations of other people more than they do brands. And while you can (and should) leverage influencer partnerships for ad campaigns, you can save time and money when you involve your own customers in the campaign.

The beauty brand Glossier is known for showcasing real customers in their ad campaigns and re-posting user content on social media. Take the “Feeling like Glossier” campaign, for example.

The entire campaign centered on real people from diverse backgrounds. Not only was this campaign successful, but the brand continues to encourage users to create content using hashtags like #GlossierIRL so that this content can be re-shared by Glossier.

One of the best ways to involve your customers in your next ad campaign is to incentivize them through giveaways and user spotlights. For example, when they share a self-made video and use a branded hashtag, they could enter to win a free yearly subscription or product package.

This type of ad strategy is cost-effective brand-building for you, but it also benefits your customers.

2. Consider Using Alternative Filming Gear

User-generated content adds quality and authenticity to ad campaigns, but it’s not a substitute for the branded content you plan, produce, and distribute.

When it comes to video production, there is a misconception that businesses need a filming setup of Hollywood production proportions to create great content.

In all actuality, you can produce meaningful ad content for your website, social media, Google, etc. without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund a fully staffed in-house production studio.

And that’s because foundational videography skills, a selection of basic gear, and a video editing software is all that you really need to make video ads.

Minimal funding requires some flexibility on your part, which is why it’s important to explore your alternatives to the traditional video production process.

Instead of investing in expensive camera gear that is difficult to learn and operate, you can film the content you need with the smartphone device you already have. (Here’s just one example of a smartphone-produced ad.)

And if you don’t have room in your budget to rent or buy gear like a dolly setup or camera stabilizer, you can opt for a tripod or a DIY handheld stabilizer instead.

Creating a successful ad campaign with minimal funding is completely doable — you may just have to cut a few corners here and there.

By using alternative filming gear, you can allocate leftover production funds to your campaign’s distribution channels.

3. Book Multiple Campaign Shoots for The Same Day

As you plan out the content in your campaign, it’s important that the videos you create tell a cohesive story that aligns with your team’s campaign objective (i.e., to convert social media users into email newsletter subscribers, improve the click-through rate, etc.).

One way that you can film these videos in less time and with less funding is by scheduling two or more campaign shoots for the same day at the same location.

Let’s say that, like Glossier, you’re centering a campaign around five of your current customers.

During the pre-production stage, try to schedule most (or all) of your shoots with these individuals for the same day. So instead of booking five different locations, you can book one location and change up the set design.

This is a cost-effective solution if you need to film a lot of content in a short amount of time. Not to mention, streamlining production like this means that you can edit and distribute your ad content sooner.

4. Leverage Your Co-Marketing Partnerships

If you’re looking to get more out of your ad campaigns, one way to do that is to collaborate with brands that share a similar target audience, customer base, and mission.

As part of a co-marketing partnership, you could run an ad campaign that advertises a product or service that you’re launching in partnership with (and even support for) another brand.

Starbucks’ #whatsyourname campaign is a great example of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcSP1r9eCWw

For this ad campaign, Starbucks partnered with the UK-based charity Mermaids for a limited period of time to sell their Mermaid Cookie. A portion of each sale went toward the charity’s helpline support.

As part of this campaign, Starbucks showcased real people like Cairo and Eliza who share the story behind their names in 30-second videos.

Not only did this partnership benefit the charity’s cause, it showed viewers that Starbucks is a company that cares about its customers and their stories.

By leveraging your co-marketing partnerships for ad campaigns, you can distribute your video ads on your partner’s social media and extend your outreach to their followers as well.

Not only is this approach effective, it’s oftentimes a more affordable alternative to running ads on Google and other platforms.

5. Be Selective About When and Where You Run Ads

Choosing which distribution channels you’ll run your ad campaign on isn’t ever a last-minute decision. You want to make sure that the channels you use have the best chance of delivering a good ROI, especially when you’re working with a tight budget.

As a rule of thumb, go where your target audience goes and make sure you’re not relying too heavily on just one channel. Also, don’t be afraid to repurpose and reformat the footage to be distributed on different channels.

If you have a large following on social media, run a series of paid ads over the course of a week and track engagement. If you re-share a user-generated post on Facebook, boost this post to reach more people in less time.

The main takeaway — whether you’re advertising on social media, Google, or another channel — is to closely monitor progress and test out different strategies until you find what works best for your business.

Mackenzie is a copywriter at Soundstripe, a royalty free background music company that provides filmmakers, creators, and advertisers with royalty free sports music, among other genres.