B2B Email Marketing Strategy

Five Ways to Make Your Email Marketing More Powerful

Five tips to take to make you B2B Email marketing more powerful. These five tactics are simple, yet when applied with skill, can send your lead generation efforts through the roof.

1. Have a troubleshooting process

When an email campaign isn’t performing up to standards, how do you determine what’s working and what’s not? Is it the creative? The call to action? LeadGen Compass keeps it simple and starts with this three step troubleshooting process. First, have you tested the From? It’s the first thing most recipients see, so check to make sure it’s helping your efforts. It’s not unusual to see a different response from info@ than greg@. Second, move to the subject line. If your email inbox is like mine, I see the From and the Subject line before I open the email and that’s all I need to make a value judgement. Check that your subject line is doing enough to get the prospect to open your creative. Third, check the pre-text that shows up in an email before the images are loaded. We’ve tested everything from sales copy to “please load images to see our pretty pictures.” It’s worth taking a look at.

2. Change your language by segment

Sending multiple emails about subjects that aren’t interesting to prospects is a surefire way to depress response rates. I learned this the hard way in the mid-2000s with the apparel company I started. Announce a mens item on sale to the group, hear from the women. Announce a women’t item, and hear from the men. The solution was to split the list and I watched the overall response rate lift. It’s obvious in hindsight, but before we did it, it felt like double the work for a slight lift in results. It was the reverse of that, not too much effort and a doubling of results. Segment the list and talk to them in their language.

3. Personalize, but know your data

Personalization is always in the news, often referred to as the holy grail of advertising. Only relevant messages get through, response rates go through the roof, and you live like Mr. Big. The reality is more like that item you checked out on storeX.com last week continues to show up in your ad feeds for a month after you’ve purchased. We’re believers in the idea that a customer file including a First name field can be used to get a little boost in response rates. Beyond that, you’re data hygiene game needs to be solid. Especially if you’re trying to personalize prospect emails. We’ve found it’s better to err on the side of segmenting and changing the language you use with the segment, versus relying on personalization, especially with prospects. Prioritize your efforts.

4. Test sending more emails than you think

When first working with clients, one of the first questions is “what’s the best day to send emails?” To us, that’s like asking, “how long is a piece of string?” There are so many variables, it’s hard to answer definitively. One answer that works is Test It. Test sending across different days and times and subject lines and, well, test everything. A favorite test that scares everyone to death is to double and triple the number of emails you’re sending. It’s scary to clients because they think of people unsubscribing in droves. It’s scary to their marketing people because it’s a lot of content. On our side, it represents a lot of work because the trick is to keep the content valuable, and value lies with the recipient. If it lifts leads, however, it may be worth it.

5. You don’t always have to be selling

Tied into #4 is this idea: when you send more emails, that doesn’t mean you have to send more offers. Mix it up and send different content. We start with the premise, “what do you know that would help your customers be kick-ass?” Write about that. In your head, picture your best friend coming to you for advice. What would you tell her to lookout for? What insider information will help her get the most from your product. Start there.

If you need help with these hints, LeadGen Compass’ integrated full service email marketing services solution, you’ll get a team of email marketing professionals that have deployed millions of emails to date, helping you manage your email marketing campaigns. We’re a cost-effective solution that will save you time, money, and reduce your personnel’s responsibilities by applying our processes to lead generation from email marketing.

If you want to know how they apply to your business and your industry specifically, give us a call. LeadGen Compass is set up to help you get more than just advice, but we’re happy to talk about what needs to be done.