B2B email – how to maximise delivery rates
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B2B email marketing is highly cost-effective. Anything from two to 2 million emails (and more) can be sent with a single click of a mouse. And by directing recipients to a sign-up field on your website it also enables you to further build your opt-in database by converting targeted prospects into subscribers to your blog or newsletter. Email marketing is most effective when used as part of an integrated campaign – e.g. telemarketing and direct mail – to targeted sectors.
Ethical emailing
The law permits you to send emails offering business products or services to employees of limited companies and plc’s at their business email addresses, without them first opting to receive them. But if they ask you to stop emailing them, you must immediately remove their details from your list. That said, providing your content is in no way offensive or unethical and is relevant, the overwhelming majority of businesses are happy to receive your occasional emails, and at worst they’ll only remain indifferent to your existence or unsubscribe. Never send a B2B email that does not include a functioning unsubscribe mechanism.
Maximising delivery rates
Henry Ford complained that half of his advertising budget was wasted; the trouble was he didn’t know which half. But unlike marketers of old, email marketers can get a much better idea of where their budgets are being wasted because their email management systems will generate delivery failure notices. Delivery failure can be down to any number of reasons: the recipient may have recently moved or changed their email address; your message may have been picked up as spam; their server may be programmed to reject emails from your server; there may be a failed server or other technical problem. To minimise delivery failure, it is important only to use data sources that have been subjected to regularly updated quality checks. The general rule is that the cleaner the data, the fewer the ‘bounce backs’ and the better the conversion.
TIP:
To bypass spam filters, avoid trigger words in your subject lines and content such as ‘money back’, ‘extra income’, ‘order now’, ‘order today’, ‘special promotion’, ‘marketing solutions’, ‘free!’ (spam filters hate exclamation marks!!!), ’4U’ or ‘££’, etc, etc. Keep your subject lines low key.
TIP:
When sourcing email lists it is vital that the data you purchase is fully compliant with The Direct Marketing Association’s DM Code of Practice http://www.dma.org.uk/content/membership-information and the Data Protection Act [http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection.aspx ].
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