So many B2B email marketing campaigns to cold prospects are doomed to failure from the beginning – simply because they are not properly planned or costed. Perhaps because email campaigns are low-cost to implement, many B2B marketers seem to adopt the suck-it-and-see approach, with no clear idea about what they aim to achieve.
Strategy = clarity + focus
The first step to maximising the returns from your email marketing campaign is to devise a plan. With a clear and properly considered strategy you’ll know exactly what you want to achieve, how you will get there and how much it will cost. You will also know what you need to measure to determine the success of the campaign.
Without a plan you are just spending money on sending out emails, with no idea about what a successful outcome would look like or whether you’ve achieved a worthwhile response.
Nevertheless, it’s surprising just how many marketers think they can get away without a proper strategy. According to Forrester’s Benchmark Your Email report, which analysed data on 260 email marketers from the Global Email Marketing Business Process Online Survey:
- 40 per cent of marketers do not have a formal email strategy documented or enforced
- Most marketers are still only using basic metrics to gauge response. Only 39per cent track ROI, and only 15 per cent track LTV
- 70 per cent of marketers are not using advanced analytics to measure response
- 21 per cent of marketers have no plan for managing email frequency.
With 51 per cent of email marketers reportedly spending at least £10,000 a year and 18 per cent of those spending more than £50,000 on their annual email marketing budget – the lack of a strategy could be a very expensive mistake to make.
The Email Marketing Industry Census also found that 48 per cent of digital marketers saw lack of strategy as a barrier to the effective use of email. It is enlightening that in the same report, strategy and campaign planning was considered the number one focus for 2010 amongst digital marketers.
Set your objectives
So, how do you go about devising your strategy? The first step is to clarify your objectives. These could include:
- Build customer interaction/brand
- Drive customers to your website
- Sell products/services
- Promote events or news
- Cultivate customer interest
- Build your prospect email list.
- 51per cent spending at least £10,000 a year
- 30 per cent spending £5,000 or less annually
Focus on one or two goals per campaign
Being focused is the key to success. You need to accept that no single campaign can achieve all of your goals especially when you are trying to reach out to prospects that you don’t have an existing relationship with. Therefore you need to be realistic, and devise individual campaigns that each focus on a maximum of two objectives.
Once you have decided what you want to achieve, you need to work out how you are going to achieve it. Think about which segment of your target market will you approach and which messages you want to communicate to them.
Refining the numbers
Then you can put some numbers into the mix. You may want to set a target for the number of customers you need to drive to your website. Or the uplift in sales you are aiming to achieve. Or by how much you want to grow your email list.
Initially, this exercise ay largely involve plucking numbers out of the air. However, with a robust measurement system in place to track responses to your emails, you’ll quickly be able to develop more realistic targets. With each campaign you run, your targets will become more accurate.
Calculate your costs
Once you know what you want to achieve, how you’re going to do it and with whom, you have a strategy. All you need to do now is allocate a budget.
To calculate your budget you need to know:
- Your objectives and how quickly you want to achieve them. For example, 100 new customers in a year
- Conversion rates. What proportion of email responses become sales?
- Response rates. A low 4-5 per cent response rate is typical for email marketing to cold prospects. However, if you work with a good B2B email marketing supplier you should be able to achieve unique open response rates of at least 10-12 per cent. Over time you will become better at gauging your own response rates
- Your costs for services such as design, copywriting, email fulfilment and enquiry handling.
To work out the budget for your campaign, it helps to work back from your ultimate objective. Let’s say you want to gain 100 new customers in a year, and 10 per cent of responses turn into sales – you then know you need to generate 1000 responses over the year.
If 10 per cent of your emails generate responses, you will need to send out 10,000 emails in a year to reach your response goal. If you then know that it costs £385 in total to email a thousand prospects, your annual B2B email marketing budget will be £3850.
Balancing your budget
If this calculation process generates a budget that is beyond your means, you will need to take one of these actions:
1. Improve your conversion rates
2. Improve your response rates
3. Reduce your costs (although this might affect your response rates)
4. Lower your expectations.
You will probably need to spend some time working though this equation, getting the balance right so that it works for your business and budget.
Nevertheless, time spent planning and budgeting now will be rewarded in the long run with more successful and measurable B2B email marketing campaigns that make a valuable contribution to your business objectives.
