B-2-B Email Marketing Campaigns, A Strategic Marketing Force to be Reckoned With In order to stay competitive in today’s tough business climate, it is imperative that businesses employ various marketing strategies to ensure overall success of a campaign. One such method that continues to show phenomenal promise is business-to-business email marketing campaigns. Looking ahead to 2005, marketers are using various tactics to target potential customers via email that will allow them to test the waters, measure response rates, deliverability and allow them to build a more solid customer list. In addition, many marketers plan to capitalize on one specific marketing tool to enhance their email campaigns, namely the creation of specific landing pages. This tactic according to various marketing analysts is the single most email marketing tactic that is expected to grow considerably in 2005. Currently being used by various marketers, specific landing pages, is one tool that they have no plans to abandon any tome soon. So just what are email marketers planning to use in their campaigns in 2005? It’s simple, building better potential customer lists, a stronger customer base and improving relationships through the use of various marketing techniques that are a good fit for email campaigns. Some of the tactics under consideration for use include: The creation of co-registration relationships with partner organizations. The creation of campaign specific landing pages. The timing of the message. Automated campaigns based on coming events or actions. The use of 3rd party newsletters via email. Targeted promotions to 3rd party rented lists. Targeted email alerts to in-house lists. Create and publish via email in-house newsletters.
Once these various tactics are employed, marketers can test the waters and measure results. Several key factors will be observed as an indication of the level of success of the campaign. The obvious number one factor to be watched closely will be of course the specific landing pages since it is considered the most significant part of the emailmarketing plan. Other factors that will also be carefully looked at include whether or not long copy vs. short copy works better, the effects of personalizing email campaigns, the use of HTML over text emails, the grabbing power of subject lines and the importance of the name located in the “From” line. 24% to 29% of marketer’s plan to test one or more of these factors through their B-2-B email marketing campaigns while 20% to 35% do not. More significantly 11% to 24% of
marketers who have employed one or more of these tactics have reported significant positive results while another 10% of marketers have reported substantial positive results. Additionally, for reasons unknown, 26% to 43% of marketers have no immediate plans to incorporate these factors into their marketing campaigns. In addition to creating a strong core email campaign, other activities should be considered to overcome potential obstacles that could inhibit the success of an email campaign. There are several possible issues that a successful email campaign must overcome including spam blockers that may view certain emails as junk mail and it may very well wind up in a person’s junk mail box, never to be read at all. The key for marketers to remember is to segment consumers based on their demographics and behaviors. Consumers are inundated on a daily basis with email of all types. Most of these messages however are ignored because they lack relevance. They are in many cases viewed as a nuisance and go unread or are deleted without being viewed at all. In addition, timing is really everything. The timing of the message can have a major impact on the response rate. Recent studies have shown that Monday is the best day to deliver the message while Saturday appears to be the worst possible day. In the grand scheme of email marketing, the sad fact of the matter is that only 19% of marketers have currently deployed e-mail marketing analytics tools such as the ones mentioned here. As such, the majority of marketers are missing the opportunity to create meaningful segments through product profiling that produce relevant offers to customers, thereby missing the boat on reaping the benefits that a successful email campaign can offer. It is a fact that marketers who use this type of “advanced targeting” experienced conversion rates that were 1 to 4 points higher than those who did not. Overall, B-2B email marketing campaigns are rapidly turning into a force to be reckoned with!