KEY TAKEAWAYS
- An in-depth analysis and understanding of what it is you are working to promote is critical. It allows you to develop the appropriate design for the content that will appeal to your prospects.
- You also want to determine exactly what it is that your customers and prospects value. If the emails do not provide something of value to the recipient, then your emails run the risk of being ignored, rendering your efforts ineffective.
- Evaluating and determining what you’ve done in the past and what the results have been will help you to craft an evidence-based strategy right from the start.
- Carefully select an email service provider, or ESP, a company that offers cloud-based software applications that facilitate email marketing including sending the emails themselves.
- There are many tips and tricks involved in maximizing the results of email marketing campaigns. However, there are pitfalls you want to avoid as well, which are important, as people have hundreds of emails arriving daily into their inboxes.
- It’s important to keep in mind that you are competing with every email that the subscriber has received. So you really want to make your email subject lines stand out from the rest.
- Rather than buying lists, invest in building your email list by creating offers that incentivize your prospects to opt-in to your list.
Email marketing is one of the best strategies for growing your business and staying connected to your customers. Even during this time of social media and instant everything, email marketing is still ranked as the most effective marketing channels. But not all email marketing campaigns are created equal.
59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions.
Are you targeting the right audience? Are you connecting to them the right way?
Here, at Creative Propulsion Labs, we take a nuanced approach to creating an email marketing campaign for your company by first seeking to thoroughly understand your business, your products or services, and your customers before we begin drafting any strategies or particular tactics for your email marketing campaigns. We also use current best practices to implement your campaigns.
Here are seven ways the team at Creative Propulsion Labs will supercharge your email marketing campaign:
1. Understand your marketing goals.
First, and most importantly, you need to understand what your company represents. An in-depth analysis and understanding of what it is you are working to promote is critical. It allows you to develop the appropriate design for the content that will appeal to your prospects.
Here are some of the things to consider when developing your email marketing strategy:
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Does your company sell products or services?
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Do you offer several different brands or product lines?
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Is your brand new to your market or well established?
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What are the goals for your marketing campaign?
The table and funnel below outline a typical suggested B2B buyer’s journey for B2B businesses. When considering overall marketing strategy, keeping the buyer’s journey in mind will help your team better understand how to push traffic, generate sales, and drive conversions.
2. Know what your customers value.
You also want to determine exactly what it is that your clients and prospects value. If the emails do not provide something of value to the recipient, then your emails run the risk of being ignored, rendering your efforts ineffective.
Things that prospects commonly find valuable are quality entertainment, educational content that’s highly relevant, lifestyle tips and hacks, and, of course, the occasional killer discount. Before sending out a single email, work to fine-tune your understanding of exactly what it is that your prospects value so that you can be sure they’re receiving content from you that they’ll find meaningful and useful.
3. Analyze past results.
Examine your history of marketing and advertising, especially your digital marketing and email marketing efforts, if there have been any. Some of the particulars to look at are:
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Past email marketing methods
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Past email marketing campaigns
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The age of your mailing list
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The number of subscribers in your list
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Past user engagement
Determining what you’ve done in the past and what the results have been will help you to craft an evidence-based strategy right from the start.
4. Select an appropriate ESP (email service provider).
An email service provider, or ESP, is a company that offers cloud-based software applications that facilitate email marketing including sending the emails themselves.
There is no one-size-fits-all ESP out there. Depending on your company’s needs, you may want to choose one ESP over another. Sometimes the solution may be to combine services so that you can tap into the combining strengths of multiple ESP’s. Just remember, whatever route you take, the ultimate goal is to yield the best results for your marketing campaign.
Some ESPs are better for e-commerce companies because they can be integrated into your sales data. This allows you to determine what’s working and what isn’t. Some are better for newsletter type campaigns, or educational campaigns, and so on.
Using a robust ESP has many benefits.
CAN-SPAM Compliance
Using an ESP ensures that these rules are followed. EPS’s stay up-to-date on all applicable email marketing laws and work to ensure your campaigns are CAN-SPAM compliant. Under CAN-SPAM laws, numerous elements are required in every email you send such as the unsubscribe link and a mailing address. You can learn more about CAN-SPAM compliance here.
Scheduling
Using a powerful ESP allows you to schedule your emails well in advance.
Drip Campaigns
Drip Campaigns can be a powerful tool to use for your email marketing also. These are a series of emails sent out on a schedule — are the perfect complement to a great B2B e-commerce platform, as it drives more traffic and generates higher conversions. Also known as automated email campaigns, drip campaign emails are drafted in advance, and then using an automated system, they are sent them out on a preset schedule. Click here to learn more about creating an automated email flow sequence.
Personalized Sales Email Sequences
While drip campaigns work well for general marketing, personalized sales emails have the ideal tone and content for generating B2B leads. The conversational nature of these email sequences goes hand in hand with the way B2B business is typically done. Outside of your typical trade shows, client lunches, and business meetings, these emails are the closest equivalent to a digital handshake. Adding a personal touch with sales email sequences is the perfect way to engage warm and cold leads, as well as connect with existing clients.
You can explore more about generating sales and leads with automated email sequences here.
Segmenting
Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue.
Using an ESP allows you to create segmented mailing lists. For example, you can create lists of customers that have purchased from you or recipients that aren’t opening your emails. This lets you fine-tune your target audience.
For instance, some prospects will subscribe to your list just for the freebie or discount that’s being offered. Once the freebies have been claimed, your emails then get sent to the trash or spam box rather than the prospect simply unsubscribing.
Keep your email list fresh by weeding out the no-opens. Don’t delete them, though. Move them to a segmented list that only receives emails from you occasionally, like when you’re having a big sale or some sort of promotion for first-time buyers. Who knows, those unresponsive prospects might come back to life in the future.
Don’t know where to begin? Here are a few of the more popular email tools available:
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a great user-interface for setting up email marketing campaigns, allowing you to send emails, manage subscribers, offer tracking, set up autoresponders, create email templates, target subscribers, and split test campaigns.
Hubspot
Hubspot is an inbound marketing and sales platform with a free integrated CRM, that helps companies to attract visitors, convert leads and close customers, to better manage sales and marketing activities efficiently, and nurture leads through the buyer's journey effortlessly. Hubspot features convenient integrations with robust features that even commercial CRMs do not possess.
Sender
Sender.net can be integrated with your e-commerce platform to capture customers' email addresses, utilize abandoned cart emails, set up your automated workflows based on customer behavior, and more. Convenient plugins available for Magento, PrestaShop and WooCommerce.
Other helpful ESPs:
5. Be aware of email marketing pitfalls.
There are many tips and tricks involved in maximizing the results of email marketing campaigns. However, there are pitfalls you want to avoid as well.
People have hundreds of emails arriving daily into their inboxes. Some of those emails get opened up, some get trashed, and some just sit there causing emails to pile up. Your email is competing with all of these other emails. So how do you get the recipient to click on yours as opposed to the hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of other emails just sitting in their inbox?
Consider the days of the week in which you are sending out your marketing emails. The most effective days to send out marketing emails are Tuesday through Thursday. Here’s why.
Most interpersonal emails are sent on Mondays when people are ramping up their workweek. So marketing emails are likely to get buried in a sea of mission-critical emails meaning your marketing emails will be pushed aside or missed altogether. We definitely don’t want that to happen, right?
As for the latter part of the week, people are far less likely to read every single email on a Friday, or any emails at all on the weekend. So that leaves Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Ta-dah! That’s why sending your marketing email on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday is your best bet for email recognition and interaction. What a difference a day makes, huh?
It is important to keep in mind the days of the week your business is sending out other content (emails, newsletters, etc). Schedule your outbound content so that it does not all arrive to someone's inbox on the same day. No one wants to receive 3 emails from the same company in the same day, so be sure you pay mind to scheduling your outbound content well. If not, your chances of the email going to spam increase with every ill-scheduled email.
Explore some of the marketing trends of 2020 here.
6. Write effective subject lines and use the right tone.
No email is an island. Your email will show up in an inbox filled with various other emails vying for your prospect’s attention. So it’s important to keep in mind that you are competing with every email that the subscriber has received. So you really want to make your email subject lines stand out from the rest.
To stand out in the crowd, use attention-grabbing tactics such as customer-focused buzzwords or emojis — or both. Subject lines should not be comprised of generic words made to get the point across. Strive to use words that matter to your recipients, pique their interest, and compel them to open your email. Take these subject lines for example:
Bad subject line: “See what we have in store for you today!”
Good subject line: “Going on vacation? Here are 10 money-saving tips for travelers.”
The first subject line above uses generic terminology that doesn’t appeal to anyone in particular. The second subject line denotes a target audience and how opening this email can be of value to them.
It is just as important to set the right tone for your emails. When writing copy to your B2B prospects, it is important that it sounds like it is coming from you. With the deluge of emails only increasing steadily every day, it is vital for you to stand out from the crowd.
Speak directly to other small businesses, let them know you understand their challenges, and explain how you will help them solve those struggles. Your writing should be familiar and outcome-based. Focused on how you will help them. Why do they need your services? What are you bringing them? Directly provide them the value of your service or offering.
7. Don’t buy email lists — build them with a purpose.
Never purchase email lists. Bought lists have a dismally low open rate. These email lists contain people who have not expressed an interest in your offerings. Emails sent to bought lists mostly end up being part of the noise that the recipients are trying to filter out of their inbox. These emails can also get you labeled as a spammer!
Rather than buying lists, invest in building your email list by creating offers that incentivize your prospects to opt-in to your list.
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This is just a short list of the ways that you can work to maximize the return on your email marketing investment. If you’re seeking a world-class digital marketing team, we’d be thrilled to discuss your company’s goals and share with you our best strategies to help you achieve, or even surpass, those goals. Give us a call at +1 (786) 360-1669.
Need help improving your B2B sales funnel? Check out some valuable strategies here.
