Demand generation is a top priority for B2B marketers. In today’s highly saturated world of marketing, it is becoming harder and harder to effectively reach your target, making demand generation goals harder to achieve. Due to the higher cost often associated with direct marketing, marketers from all areas depend heavily on the cost effective medium of email marketing.
With easy to use tools and online applications filling the market, learning to send promotional emails is easy. In a time of email overload, successfully breaking through the spam and warranting a response is where it gets tricky.
So how do you increase the odds of your email getting a response? Make the most of every contact. To run successful demand generation email campaigns, marketers must go back to the basics and refer to the email marketing ABC’s.
Email Marketing ABC’s.
To increase your overall email success rates and leverage email marketing to generate demand, there are 5, easy to remember, tips to follow. We call these our e-marketing ABC’s.
A: Align Messaging and Offers
B: Be Creative
C: Create Urgency
D: Deliver Value
E: Ensure Understanding
Align Messaging and Offers. Know your target. Everyone is different. Avoid mass mailings and stick to more targeted campaigns. To do so, you must segment emails appropriately. Take what you know about your target and tailor the emails and corresponding calls-to-action to appeal to their interests. This can be done through segmenting lists based on similarities in roles—customers vs. prospects, product users vs. product buyers, executives levels vs. operations. The segmenting possibilities are endless. The more segmented your list is, the easier it is to tailor your message and offer and the more likely your message will hit home and warrant a response.
Be Creative. Breakthrough the email overload. Your recipients are busy. They do not have time to read/respond to every email they receive. Overcome the clutter. Identify ways you can differentiate your email and offer from the others in your recipient’s inbox and grab your reader’s attention. Don’t be afraid to take chances. A few examples include compelling subject lines, interactive quizzes, unique offers/giveaways and unusual graphics. The more creative your emails are, the harder they are to resist.
Create Urgency. Identify reasons that your target should “act now.” People do not want to miss out. Whether it involves downloading an article or whitepaper or registering for a webinar or product demo, position your call to action as a must-do, now. The greater urgency created by the message, the more likely your readers will be to open and respond immediately, vs. saving it for that hard-to-come-by, more convenient time. The further down your email gets in your reader’s inbox, the greater your chances are it will never be read. Don’t let your email be forgotten, create reader urgency, making it so irresistible it must be opened and acted upon immediately.
Deliver Value. Ensure your reader’s experience is worth the time. Whatever your call-to-action may be, if you want your readers to respond, you must deliver something of value. Provide your audience with helpful information and best practices. Offer valuable tips and tricks that relate to your organization’s area of expertise and to your readers interests. From a simple “quick fact” to an article, whitepaper or product demo, deliver your readers something educational. Avoid sales pitches. Position your organization as a thought leader and use this opportunity to reinforce your organization’s expertise in your space. The more relevant and valuable the email offer is to your reader, the more likely they will respond.
Ensure Understanding. Make your call-to-action easy to understand and act on. Remember your readers have a lot going on. To encourage a response, make sure that at-a-glance, they understand what you are offering and how it is relevant to them. A good practice is to expect they will not read your entire email and to lay it out accordingly. Do not bury your offer/call-to-action deep within the body. Keep your important information close to the top, ideally high enough that it can be seen in the email preview pane. Limit your messaging and highlight key points and calls-to-action. Often, this can be accomplished with easy to read call-out boxes and buttons. Whether it is a whitepaper download, or registration for an upcoming event, be clear and make a response as simple as possible.
Increase your Success Rate
Email marketing, when done correctly, can be a reliable, cost effective source for generating demand. While it is often difficult to generate responses through this medium, there are some simple tips that marketers can turn to for guidance.
Ensure you make the most of every contact. Before sending your next email, go back to the basics and reference your e-marketing ABC’s. By following these few simple best practices you will watch your email response rates climb.
Need to rev up your email marketing? We can help. Contact Launch Marketing today.
Graphic Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logo_abc.jpg
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