What Matters Most is Relevancy: The standing adage is that
marketing email about a topic the recipient is interested in is information,
not spam. Marketers should strive to make their email campaigns relevant with
messages and offers that most recipients will be genuinely be interested in.
Witness: email about favorite hobbies that get much higher open rates than more
general messages. Typical ways to be more relevant to BtoB recipients: provide
free of charge unique information compiled through primary research conducted
by the sender, offer free advice on topics of interest, create a practical
summary of key points and available resources for further study can.
Drive Email 'Opens' With an Attractive Hook
Knowing what is an attractive incentive comes down to
understanding one’s audience. B to C marketers may use more broad-based
incentives such as free merchandise or contests, while B to B marketers benefit
more from focusing on the pain points and problems that customers are trying to
address with free trials to products that can help. Distilling this hook in an
effective subject line plays an important role. Run multiple tests to determine
which subject line works best.
Guide the Reader to the Call-to-Action
Any email should be designed to elicit a certain behavior or
action from the recipient. In this respect, it is important to be mindful of
established visual patterns when consuming email: reading left to right for
most people in Western countries, the attractiveness of images vs. copy, the
role of fonts. A well-designed email seamlessly guides the reader’s eyes to the
place where the key action should be taken.
Email and Landing Pages go Hand-in-Hand
People’s attention span on email is quite short, but those
who click through are looking for more and should have their level of interest
rewarded with additional information and options that further the engagement.
The landing page is the place to provide data that re-enforces the initial
hook, deepens the relationship, and yields an action by the reader that is
valuable: fill a contact form , call a number, download a document, register an
email,…
Email is Not Just for Filling the Funnel
Email is an effective way to continue to touch potential
customers who have expressed some interest in your offering. Subsequent touches
can include: sending a new stream of messages to recipients who did not open
the original email, or a “closing” email to those who did open it but took no
further action. If email addresses are associated with certain personas through
registration then the next emails can reflect the products or topics that the
customer has shown interest in through web browsing.
Control Email Frequency to Avoid Fatigue
Because email is relatively inexpensive, various teams may
simultaneously plan for email blasts that use the same list. This is a risky
mode of operation as the saturation level for email can be reached very
quickly. Recipients now have a variety of tools at their disposal to filter out
email that they perceive as unwanted: Outlook has a junk E-mail tool, Yahoo!
Mail allows users to mark senders as spam, Gmail has a block list.
Use Images Judiciously
Images in marketing email can make messages slow to load and
overburden storage so it is important to use them for the part of the email
that needs to make the most important visual impact, not for other content such
as disclaimers.
Be Familiar with CAN-SPAM Standards
The CAN_SPAM act was passed in 2003 to address the explosion
of abusive email. The most important provision for professional marketers
relates to the mandatory inclusion of an opt-out or unsubscribe option. This
requirement actually works in favor of the marketer in the sense that it
enforces a mechanism that results in higher quality lists and therefore better
results.
Don’t Forget Mobile
Smartphones and tablets are more used to read email than to
make phone calls. If you are not adapting your email marketing strategy to take
mobile devices into account, you are missing a rapidly growing opportunity to
reach a majority of potential customers on their preferred devices. People
don’t read email on mobile devices the same way they do on a desktop. Research
the difference in the way mobile users access email according to device type,
time of day of use, length of time spent on email, to develop an email format
that maximizes open rates. An overwhelming majority of email is checked on
Apple devices, so it is important to optimize message format for Apple users.
Testing is the Key to Success
Testing your marketing email with different email clients
and devices should be routine practice to optimize the experience from the
user’s point of view. Different clients will display core elements of your
email differently so it is critical to at least make sure that the formatting
does not “break” with any of the major email platforms. Testing the message,
offer, subject line, image type and position, type of call-to-action is all
part of an effective email marketing program.
