By Sara Roa, Director of Marketing & PR
Email marketing has always been a steady and reliable way to communicate with clients and prospects. But when COVID-19 hit, many B2B companies that were not already communicating in this way were forced to make a quick shift to digital marketing channels. While we’re beginning to move into a post-pandemic world, email marketing will continue to thrive as a large portion of our population continues to work remotely. If your business hasn’t adopted an email marketing strategy yet, now is the time to start. Here are five best practices for creating successful email campaigns:
- Establish a solid email list
Before you can develop an email campaign, you need to build an organic list with names and email addresses of people who would benefit from whatever it is you’re offering. But what does “organic” mean? An organic list is comprised of people who have expressed interest in receiving your emails and content. They can be contacts who have shared their emails with you by signing up to receive information through your website, by giving you their contact information directly, etc. By continuing to collect contact information from target audiences, you will grow your list over time. While tempting, email lists should never be purchased. Not only are purchased lists largely ineffective, they’re banned by reputable email platforms. Equally important to growing your list is keeping it clean. According to Mailchimp, email lists naturally degrade by about 22 percent each year as contacts change their email addresses. Verification tools such as Norbert can help you scrub your list of duplicates, bad formats, and inactive or invalid domains.
- Create mobile-friendly content
Nearly every report on email ‘open rates’ states that mobile is responsible for at least 50 percent of all emails opened. In today’s remote world, emails must be mobile-friendly so readers can easily view them on their phones and tablets. Not only can non-mobile-friendly emails significantly hurt your open rates, but they can make your company look out of touch. Keep your subject lines short, body copy concise, and place Calls to Action (CTAs) front and center. Also be wary using image-heavy emails since not all mobile devices automatically download images.
- Provide useful content
Email campaigns should showcase your company’s thought leadership and expertise. Be sure to keep content fresh and relevant and don’t send out the same type of content every time. Think about what your audiences want to know, what questions they have, what problems they need solved, etc. and use this as fodder for interesting topics. Email campaigns should offer useful, educational content such as blog posts, whitepaper downloads, guides, upcoming webinars, surveys, and more.
- Include a CTA
For B2B companies, the goal of email marketing is to nurture prospects and generate new leads. Email outreach should be part of an ongoing conversation with your audience and just one tool in your marketing toolbox. But the emails need to do more than just remind clients you exist—they must spark action. Think about what it is you want your clients to do. CTAs can ask people to subscribe to future emails, download an e-book, answer a question, share relevant resources, and more. The right CTA will help to move prospects and leads through the sales funnel.
- Build a content calendar
Having consistent, regular contact with clients and prospects is important to building credibility. When it comes to sending effective email campaigns, planning is key. A well-organized content calendar will go a long way in solidifying your company’s position as a trusted resource. An editorial content calendar should include a list of topics, authors, CTAs, dates, and distribution channels. This will help you avoid scrambling for content at the last minute and ensure that what you’re sending clients and prospects is timely, relevant, and informative.
Email marketing is a powerful tool for B2B companies. When done right, reaching the right audiences with relevant content, emails are highly effective at nurturing leads and generating some of the highest ROI of any marketing channel. Especially in today’s remote world, email marketing is critical for helping you connect with customers and prospects and opening the door for more detailed conversations. To learn more about how to you can improve our company’s email marketing efforts, please contact us today.
