How b2b E-Mail Marketers Can Drive E-Mail Marketing Performance
Massive Impressions | 19 Aug 2008
Massive Impressions, an online marketing & advertising agency, is proud to make available a recent white paper on b2b e-mail marketing to all e-mail marketers.
It is entitled 3 Big E-Mail Marketing Mistakes: Don’t Sabotage the Most Cost-Effective B2B Marketing Tool In Your Arsenal.
E-mail remains one of the most inexpensive and quickest ways to reach a b2b audience. The key is to focus mailings on people who want to hear the message being delivered. To do this, permission mailing must be done, which means having people opt-in to a one to one relationship by signing up for alerts, newsletters, white paper downloads, etc.
Mistake #1 Not Knowing, Understanding or Adhering to Federal Can-Spam Regulations
Federal law requires bulk e-mails include a physical address. The regulations around e-mail apply to everyone, b2b and consumer marketers alike. There are web resources to help marketers comply with these regulations – and most people will need the help, because many of the mandates are vague.
Mistake #2 Sending E-mails, Lots of E-mails from the Company Server
So, an e-mail has been designed to comply with spam regulations. But what’s the next step? How does one send it in a safe way?
Technology makes it easy for an e-mail to get reported as spam. Desktop internet security software embeds buttons into Outlook that allow e-mails to be easily marked as unwanted.
When enough people, or the wrong person, reports an e-mail marketer's efforts, the e-mail server sending the messages gets blacklisted. This means the company gets marked as a spammer with one or more of the major spam monitoring authorities.
Once a server is blacklisted, day-to-day e-mails are also marked as spam. This will negatively impact everyday communications- undoubtedly slowing down business.
So how does a company send out those 1,000 e-mails? Use a third party, web-based service. There are lots of them out there. They offer templates, tracking, reporting and most importantly – automated list management.
Mistake #3 List Quantity Over List Quality
Many companies have been collecting names for years. Theyve purchased lists, captured names at trade shows, kept the cards of every prospect. So they should send e-mails to these contacts, right? Wrong.
First, segment lists based on the source of the contacts. Then, send each segment a single e-mail, explaining why they’re receiving the message an offering them news, content or something of value to “opt-in” to. This is permission marketing and it pays dividends in the end – the key is providing content, news and offers of value to the audience being targeted.
At least 50% of the original list will probably opt-out of future communications. Yet, the half that remains is far more valuable because they raised their hand and expressed an interest in the company’s services and viewpoint being offered.
###
