Over 86 percent of professionals choose email as their preferred method of communication.
Anyone who says email marketing is dead, either doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or they’re doing it wrong.
Email marketing can help businesses build relationships, improve brand awareness, distribute original content and news, generate and nurture leads.
If your B2B email marketing campaigns aren’t performing as well as you’d like and you’re looking for tips to improve, it’s best to start back at the beginning. In this blog post, we’ll provide a starting place for you to audit your email marketing efforts, and make adjustments where you see fit.
Starting with a B2B Email Marketing Strategy
If your struggling with getting the results you want from your email marketing campaign, it’s best to start back at the beginning. Sending emails without a strategy is time and effort wasted. A strategy will help keep your efforts on track, and also help you measure success and failure.
First, make sure you’ve specified your audience. Create buyer personas, you will thank yourself down the road. Establish clear SMART goals for your overall strategy and all campaigns.
You’ll also want to make sure you have a place where customers can sign-up for your newsletters and emails. Then you’ll want to make sure that specify the purpose and style of each specific email campaign. Then make a schedule and follow-through.
Tips for Building and Email Marketing List
If your strategy looks tight, you’ll want to check the quality of your email list. First and foremost, if you’re paying for email lists, stop! Not only can your email address get blacklisted and sent to spam for questionable actions, but your efforts will also be wasted. Sending thousands of emails to the wrong or non-existing emails is not worth it.
So how can you get email addresses? There are a lot of different strategies for generating email leads. First, create an offer like a free guidebook or webinar that requires a person to input your email address. You’ll also want to make sure you have some type of opt-in on your website or landing page.
Basic B2B Email Marketing Best Practices
When the foundation of your email marketing strategy is laid, next check through some of the basic “best practices” for sending and responding to emails. First, it might seem like a no-brainer, but check your copy for grammatical and spelling errors, invest in software like Grammarly. Make sure the content assets you are sending out are top-notch and provide value to the receiver.
Make sure everything from the voice of your copy, to the imagery and colors, are all on-brand, consistent and ensure that your email template is mobile-friendly. Personalize emails and choose subject lines that are enticing and easy to understand. Try to keep subject lines within 50 characters max.
Include a CTA and send out emails during days of the week and times of day that make sense to your audience. For B2B email marketing specifically, it’s important to keep information clear and quick. Most of your audience is likely other busy professionals, who don’t have a lot of time to invest in reading lengthy emails.
Are Your Lists Segmented?
Another reason you could not be getting the response rates you desire is that you’re sending emails to everyone in your contact lists, and not targeting by demographics and interests. Over time, if a recipient consistently receives emails from you that don’t interest them, they will eventually unsubscribe.
Whereas if you had left this particular contact off certain emails that didn’t apply to them, you would still have the potential lead. Segmenting email lists helps improve the B2B User Experience, and the more personalized you make that experience, the more likely a user will engage with your content.
Following Email Regulations: Yep, That’s a Thing!
Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing or CAN-SPAM is a law that allows a person to unsubscribe to any unsolicited emails. If someone feels that your emails are not compliant, or you keep sending them emails when they’ve asked you to stop, they can report you.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, follow these tips to avoid getting labeled as spam or a scam.
- Accurately label the originator of the message, appropriately fill out the “To” and “From” information.
- Be honest in your subject lines, don’t use dishonest tactics.
- Include an opt-out option in all emails. If someone opts-out, unsubscribe them.
- Include a physical address of your business location.
- Distinguish your email as an advertisement.
Examine Your Email Marketing Campaign Results
Consistently track the same KPIs. Metrics like open rates, click-through rates and unsubscribes are all great to start with. In your report, you’ll also want to include the number of emails sent, how many were deliveries and how many bounced. Note the time of day the email was sent and the subject line.
Are You Ready to Take Your Email Marketing to the Next Level?
If you follow all of the tips above and are consistent, your B2B email marketing campaign will likely be successful. But don’t expect change to happen overnight. Making changes and figuring out what works and what doesn’t will take time.
The best strategy after you’ve applied all the best strategies is to analyze all of your campaign reports after you’ve run a handful with the same strategy. This will give you a clear idea of what works best for your audience, and what doesn’t.
