Email is not dead, but it is changing. Integration with social media, mobile and video is now key to successful engagement. Amanda Saint reports
Email marketing is still the most popular channel for B2B marketers to communicate with their existing and potential customers. From humble beginnings, as simply text with a few hyperlinks, today email marketing is a sophisticated tool that can provide great customer insights, as well as help organisations achieve a host of objectives.
Despite the progress made though, some now feel that email has had its day. This relative minority believes overcrowded inboxes, combined with the rise of alternatives such as social media, video and mobile marketing, mean that email is headed down the same route as its predecessor, direct mail.
However, it seems the majority of the thriving industry that has been built around this channel disagrees. Many senior practitioners think that when correctly targeted, email marketing has a lot of life left in it yet. Indeed, with the introduction of so many new channels, “we see an even more important and more central role for email,” says Richard Gibson, chair of the Direct Marketing Association’s Email Marketing Council. Gibson points out that many of the top social networks rely on email to bring members back to the site, as well as spread brand awareness to new members. He also believes delivering relevant content in a format that resonates with the recipient will overcome inbox clutter because the messages will become “too-important-to-miss attractions instead of more noise that your subscribers can safely skip.”
Sociability counts
Marketers have been finding their way through social media in recent years; discovering that it presents unique opportunities for brands to interact with their customers in new and informal ways that have lasting impacts.
Although the explosion of social media marketing was first driven in the B2C world, B2B is not too far behind. According to Graeme Hall, creative director of design agency, iFour, the move from direct selling through unilateral communication to the community-based, mutually beneficial business relationships we see today “has surpassed all expectations.” He speaks from experience of successfully delivering integrated email and social media campaigns for the Microsoft NHS Resource Centre, a community website for NHS staff with over 100,000 members.
With all social media sites requiring an email at registration, Hall says that some organisations have been slow off the mark to recognise the links between the two and are only just starting to include social media in their marketing strategies.
However, recent research by Adestra has revealed that the tide is slowly turning. Reena Mistry, marketing director at Adestra, says integrating social media with email processes is becoming a priority for marketers, with 23 per cent of companies and 30 per cent of agencies saying it is a focus for 2011.
Integration is not the only area that is lacking. Measuring ROI is also an issue with 84 per cent of marketers not seeing social media as a source for new email subscribers; and 72 per cent not measuring the impact of email on social media activity. Many companies include ‘add to social media buttons’ in their emails but fail to do the reverse and add ‘sign up to email newsletters’ buttons on their social media pages.
Despite the slow take up, the value of social media marketing is being recognised by all. This is especially true when it is used to attract new customers. Hall explains that businesses can see it is less invasive than direct emails and gives them an opportunity to develop a relationship with people through trusted third parties, rather than invading their inbox uninvited, which he likened to “turning up on someone’s doorstep at dinnertime selling double-glazing.”
Going mobile
Smartphones have now entered the mainstream and mobile marketing has become more sophisticated. The fact it is no longer reliant on SMS, and customers can now read and follow links in dynamic HTML emails, means that mobile marketing can really help drive open rates and click-throughs, if it’s done right.
When designing emails, marketers need to keep in mind that it could be viewed on a mobile so should make sure that it is easy to see calls-to-action without zooming in and include the options to add to social media, as readers are most likely to add content to social networks from their mobiles.
According to Tim Norman, director at SDL Web Content Management Solutions, emails for mobile marketing need to be to the point. He advises marketers make “every pixel matter.” But just designing them so they fit with the channel won’t drive open or click-through rates if the content isn’t relevant, so the traditional email marketing rules of segmentation and personalisation still apply.
Did video kill the email star?
Research by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has shown that marketing spend on video grew by 91 per cent in just one year, with £54 million invested in online videos in 2010. For B2B marketers most of their video spend is used for product or service demonstrations and customer testimonials.
Video is a highly effective tool for promoting engagement and interaction, especially when used in conjunction with social media. However, Gibson quite rightly highlights the fact that while video can increase value and relevance for subscribers, “implementing it for the sake of it – because it is new, shiny and cool – is rarely effective.”
Instead marketers need to use the activity data they have on their customers to create content that delivers what they want and then, finally, think about the best medium to deliver that content. And if that channel does turn out to be video, how are you going to let your customers know about it? By email, either in a regular newsletter or a dedicated campaign, so the email and the video have to work together to get the results you want.
What happens next?
Marketers must stop seeing email, social media, mobile and video as separate channels. Integration and automation are key for improving results. Mistry believes integrating social media with email is an easy way to generate content. She says, “You can easily include your most recent blog posts or tweets in your email content automatically, providing up-to-date information and also encouraging more traffic to your site.
“With the rise of automation that we are seeing at the moment, the key thing for marketers is to try and automate as much as possible. Automation means less time spent on generating email content and more time spent on analysing and improving your results.” By this she means using default templates for regular emails, such as thanks for signing up, unsubscribes and FAQs, and focusing on generating relevant and targeted content for email campaigns that are driven by the activity seen on social media sites.
Technology means the ways marketers interact with their existing and potential customers is constantly changing. Hall says that by pulling all of these channels together marketers now have the digital equivalent of the M25 to relay information and initiate discussions. He says, “Social media is the digital equivalent of ‘word-of-mouth’ which has always been one of the most effective marketing tools, with the added benefit of organisations being able to rapidly respond to what is said. So we all need to embrace the virtual opportunities on offer today, while remembering that sophisticated digital marketing will only be effective if used wisely and appropriately to match the marketing needs of a particular brand.”
Email will continue to play a key role in driving traffic between social network sites and company websites. To take advantage of these opportunities, B2B marketers must ensure they are targeted and relevant if they are to continue to successfully drive open rates.
More eyes on the mail: Top tips for improving email deliverability
• Boost sign-up rates by spelling out the benefits of your emails.
• Use email templates designed to avoid relegation to the spam folder.
• Use the subject line to deliver your key proposition succinctly, write it after the content and split test different options.
• Make sure it’s clear who the email is from, what you want the reader to do next and what benefits they get for doing it.
• Keep the content short with clear calls-to-action above the fold.
• Provide ‘view in browser’ options for mobile readers.
• Convert click-throughs with a dedicated landing page – never link to your homepage.
• Make your readers want to share your email – it needs to add value for them and their networks.
• Don’t just track open and click-through rates – track links.
• Make it relevant or none of the above will count for anything.
