As marketers, our tactics continue to evolve with how we conduct and attract business. With a multitude of options at our fingertips for information sharing and driving brand awareness, it can sometimes feel uncertain where to begin to focus our efforts. And while social media is definitely hot and on the rise, email marketing is still tried, tested, and true as a powerful and effective form of B2B communication.
According to Adobe’s August 2015 email marketing study, 63% of customers still prefer to receive marketing promotions and offers through email. That’s right—they’re not just expecting your messages – they want them!
Email certainly has its benefits over social media. It allows you to drive meaningful content and monitor customer behavior with repeated & invasive contact. Sending out a one-off post into the web may or may not get you noticed amidst a sea of content garbled together on a timeline.
If you’re not quite landing on the open rates you had hoped for, you likely just need to re-evaluate your approach. Your target audience, be it prospective customers or your current install base, typically need to know 3 things off the bat from you to grab their attention:
- What’s My Problem?
- How Do I Fix My Problem?
- Are You Right for Me?
That third one is the kicker—how you differentiate yourself among your competitors who are clamoring for the same piece of your market share and customers is everything. Your value proposition needs to be crystal clear to capture your prospects’ attention in under 30 seconds, or you will risk ending up in the dreaded ‘deleted’ folder as a perceived spammer.
Here are a few additional tips to crush your email game:
Subject line: Research impactful subject lines with free tools such as subjectline.com which provides a free ranking to drive more opens. This is what can literally make or break the success of an email campaign, so make sure you are testing out a few to ensure the best results.
Length: Keep it short and sweet (yet compelling to boot). Hone in on what is relevant / important, and trim down the excess. Also, per my next point, avoid a text-heavy approach—a short, concise email is easier on the eyes and will ultimately resonate a LOT more with your customers.
General Aesthetics: It’s 2016, folks. Optimizing your email for mobile is an absolute must as Hubspot recently reported 53% of all people check their email on their phones. Further to this, you should always include a ‘view in browser’ option for those with devices unable to support your swanky html. Do your due diligence by flipping yourself a test email first—don’t send out an eyesore!
Call to Action: An effective email should always include a clear CTA. Make your customers feel special, or create a sense of urgency that translates to a tangible action on their part (“Click here for a free trial on our fantastical xyz web app!” or entice them with an incentive for filling out a quick survey on your website. Your email should be a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Emails may be considered an old-school tactic to some, but it remains a vital (and preferred!) method of contact when used properly and optimized with various channels and tactics. The trick is to stay relevant, and align to their needs with your unique value add – and only you know what that is. Shine on!
What are you waiting for? Get @ us for a hand in your email efforts.