Imagine my shock and horror when, at a recent digital marketing event, I encountered a growing number of marketers visibly grimacing at the mention of email marketing.
“Ugh, email marketing, you mean spam?” was the general theme. Spam! My email marketer’s heart broke a little more every day.
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But you know what? They’re not wrong. Too many organizations – especially in the B2B and SaaS world – have abused email as a channel. Because it’s free, because you can “deliver” any message you want to anyone with an email address, and because it’s “traceable” to see who engages, we’ve confused the true purpose of email—building a relationship between a brand and a person—with our own selfish purposes: generating leads.
If your organization is losing confidence in email marketing, or if email is no longer an effective channel for you, let’s look at what could be wrong and how to fix it.
Email marketing is not free
Just because you have someone’s email address doesn’t mean you should email them. There are costs associated with obtaining an opt-in (an approved email address). Sometimes that’s a real cost: the cost of advertising, event involvement, or content syndication. Sometimes these are intangible costs, such as the value of trust and relationships.
Every time you send an unexpected email, or an email where someone can’t figure out why he or she received it from you, you compromise your email acquisition costs. At best, they will delete and ignore your email. In the worst case, an unsolicited or unexpected email will lead to spam complaints and unsubscribes.
Basically, if your recipients can’t figure out why you sent them this message, don’t send it at all.
It’s the relationship, always the relationship
Email is not a lead generation tool. It’s a relationship-building tool designed for a two-way conversation between your brand and a human. This is especially true if you’re a service provider, as it’s virtually impossible to ‘click to buy’ in B2B email. We do not sell sweaters! B2B and SaaS organizations are working through long-term sales that involve many parties, fluctuations in budget and needs, and changes in business operations that can impact timing. It’s completely unrealistic to expect anyone to ‘buy’ directly through a B2B email.
Instead, ask yourself: What are my chances of building a relationship with this person? Does it provide them with just the right article for what their intent signals say they are exploring? Is it to give them an invitation to an event that closely matches their interests? Is it to educate them about a change in the marketplace?
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Email marketing should focus on the recipient, not the sender. It doesn’t matter what your sales team wants to say to them, what value propositions you can present, or what you want the recipient to do next (probably book a meeting).
What’s important about email marketing is that you present your brand as a trusted resource that can help your prospects and customers navigate their business more efficiently.
Timing is everything
I once subscribed to emails from a clothing brand I really liked, only to receive an email every day with links to buy a new sweater.
When it comes to email marketing, less is more. Only send something valuable if you have something useful to send.
Gone are the days when a newsletter had to go out at 11 a.m. on Tuesday because “that’s what we’ve always done.” Gone are the days of having to add five content slots. Do you only have one thing to say? Just say that. Don’t you have anything remarkable on Tuesday? You don’t need to send an email.
When you tailor your frequency to the real needs of your recipients, you’ll have more room to send important communications without noise or distraction, and you’ll generally see greater engagement with the emails you send.
No explosions, please
List management is just as important as minimizing noise. Effective email marketing is tailored to the specific target group. A general rule of thumb is that you rarely have the opportunity to email everyone on your list at the same time.
Think about how you can segment your audience and get creative. You might consider:
- Topics with high intent.
- Titles and/or roles.
- Previous assignments and interests.
- Industries.
- Regions.
- Customers vs. prospects vs. open opportunities vs. lost customers.
The most effective messages are those intended for specific people and groups.
In short, email marketing is still one of the best performing marketing channels when it comes to revenue generation, but not because it generates any real generation. Email marketing works best as a form of relationship nurturing, and the better you do at delivering the right message to the right person at the right time, the better your email program will perform.
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