Email marketing is still one of the top performing channels.
In the time it takes to read this post there’s a good chance you’ve received a marketing or promotional email in your inbox. That makes sense considering 73% of marketers send out promotional emails at least weekly.
Even though receiving so much mail can be annoying, email marketing is reported as being one of the top performing marketing channels. According to the email platform Litmus, the ROI of email marketing is 38:1. Facebook Ads can only dream of such a high- performing ratio.
If you’re not taking advantage of email marketing to nurture existing customer relationships or to convert leads, you should be, and we’re going to give you some top tips on how to make it work for your business.
Set your email performance benchmarks
In 2018, email marketing giant Mailchimp looked at open rates across all industries and reported an average rate of 20.91%. Before you send your next email campaign, take a look at the industry list and set a performance benchmark.
2. Send emails by audience segment
This is probably the hardest to do because it takes the most work, but segmenting your audience and then sending them targeted emails will improve all metrics across a campaign. You can segment by the usual stuff like location and language but it pays to be more strategic: group segments by products purchased, specific pages visited, content downloaded. In your Shuup marketplace, you can segment using built in reports and Google Analytics events tracking.
3. How many should you send?
This all depends on your industry and what you’re sending. Generally, a couple of emails a week should be the maximum. You can try more but you risk being marked as spam; too much of that and your domain might be blacklisted (that’s bad, btw). You can create simple automated email campaigns in Shuup or integrate a platform like MailChimp for more advanced features.
4. What should you send?
Try and send content that adds value. Value is relative to your industry but B2B content assets like new whitepapers, industry surveys, research studies, eBooks, and offers and discounts perform well.
5. What not to send
Company news or product updates aren’t the most exciting things to read and they’re better left in their native environment—in the product, app, or on your website.
Try not to dress up content dumping as newsletters. Newsletters are still really effective lead generation tools so it’s important to build a truly informative, entertaining offering. No-one really wants to open an email and see a list of links to 3-year-old blog posts.
Emails shouldn’t contain aggressive sales pitches. However, the good news is that people who sign up to your list won’t be surprised when you try to push your products and services. Just do it sparingly and organically by framing it around other content or offers.
Top tips for creating effective emails
Subject lines
Arguably the most important part of an email, the quality of the subject line determines whether or not the recipient will open the email. When writing subject lines:
- Try and keep them under 40 characters for mobile users
- Start with a verb such as read, see, discover, learn, save etc.
- Be tempting but avoid clickbait. Email platforms will block spammy sounding emails
Send them from a human
Use a human “from” name. It’s far more exciting to receive, and you’re far more likely to open, an email from a name you don’t recognize than from a company.
Be personal
Add personalization tokens like first names and company names to subject lines, salutations, and body copy. A word of caution: If you use personalization, make sure your CRM or database is clean! There’s nothing worse than reading an email that starts “Dear <<blank>>”.
Be friendly, be professional
B2B isn’t a synonym for serious so try to write in a friendly, accessible, but professional tone of voice. Avoid exaggeration and overusing exclamation points. Likewise, salesy language and too many buzzwords can be off putting.
Tell readers what to do next
Every email you send should clearly tell the recipient what they should do next, whether that’s downloading your latest report or buying a product. Every email needs at least one CTA and depending on the length you can get away with up to 3 or 4. Try and place the first CTA after the first paragraph in case the reader doesn’t scroll. The CTA copy should match the TOV of the body copy.
We hope you try out these tips and start sending your customers some great email marketing campaigns. Whether you’re nurturing existing leads or trying to generate new ones, email is a cost-effective, easy-to-implement channel. With some strategic thinking and snappy copy, you’ll soon start to see the benefits.
Oh, so how many emails did you receive?
