Most marketers will tell you the money is in your e-mail list. One of the easiest ways to create an e-mail list is by offering a giveaway that someone receives in exchange for their e-mail address. What you do with that e-mail address after that initial exchange can be the difference between cultivating a relationship and an eventual sale or losing a potential customer. If you ignore the people on your email list, you’ll never develop the kind of relationship that will drive sales.

Newsletters are one way to stay top of mind and to nurture your audience until they're ready to buy. You may be thinking, But aren't newsletters time consuming and difficult to write? Don't they require a lot of design work? Sometimes. There are many different types of newsletters, and they don’t all require hours of prep work.

In this article, we'll go over 12 formats so you can pick the one that best works for you and your ideal audience and that fits your time, your brand voice, and your audience’s attention span. Keep in mind, you don’t have to pick one. You can use several of these approaches in one newsletter.

As a business in our town, we want to help you this holiday season. But we also need some assistance from you. As part of Small Business Season (November 1- December 31), we’re trying to bring awareness to the importance of shopping local.

Every time someone buys from a business in our town, something bigger happens than a simple transaction. Those dollars circulate through the community, supporting local jobs, funding community improvements, and creating a stronger local economy.

When you’re building a small business, it’s easy to focus on the day-to-day grind—inventory, customer service, cash flow, and that never-ending inbox. But if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know if you’re getting there?

That’s where a vision statement comes in. Some businesses think it’s “too corporate” or “too pretentious,” something people do to impress investors. But it’s more than a buzz phrase or a corporate checkbox.

A clear, inspiring vision is your business’s North Star—and one of the most underused tools in small business marketing. Yes, small business marketing. You don’t need to be a giant organization with stockholders to realize the power behind a well-crafted vision statement.