Email is still a fantastic tool you just need to use it properly

I just wanted to share some email marketing tips as I recently joined B2B Marketing at a time when we were launching our email marketing preference service to give our members more control over the emails they were receiving. Recognising your customers’ and prospects’ communication needs is the first step to building a more intelligent email marketing strategy. As we continue to improve our email communications I’ve been using our recently published Email Marketing Best Practice Guide with best practice and email marketing tips from the experts and thought I’d share these with you – I’ll be looking at these as we move into 2011.

1. Deliverability – More and more spam filters are placing an increased emphasis on reputation over content. If your emails are continuously deleted your reputation will fail
   
   
2. Content – Your audience is increasingly busy; give them bite size messages or deliver content via video (not within the email) as its quick and easy to consume
   
   
3. Internal stakeholders – Everyone in the business must understand that email is not a quick and cheap alternative to post, but a key relationship tool for the business – discover ways to get the rest of the company on board
   
   
4. Retention – It’s cheaper to retain a client than win a new one so treat them differently to your prospects – what about those who aren’t viewing your emails?
   
   
5. Acquisition – As an alternative, try and use other people’s client communications as a way to meet your prospects; e.g. provide an article to a newsletter that is being sent to someone else’s client base
   
   
6. Mobile – Make sure that you have a web version of your emails as a minimum but also consider designing for smaller screens as marketing on the move increases
   
   
7. Data –If they don’t want to receive it or it’s not relevant to them – they won’t read it. Ensure your list is accurate and segmented and avoid that hefty fine
   
   
8. Reporting – Use reporting to its full extent; delve deeper into the statistics and share them with account managers and the sales team to help them do their jobs
   
   
9. Relationships – Email is not simply a selling medium or a quick lead generator, especially in the B2B arena where the sales cycle can be very long, how should it best be used?

If you’re interested in reading this 90 page email marketing best practice guide for further information on how to implement these top tips on email marketing, you can download it here.