I’m an email marketer at heart. I like the power to personalize a message and deliver that message at the correct moment in time—I like delivering those messages, and I like receiving them. When email marketing is completed right, there may be just no better approach to communicate with a prospect. And that’s a hill I’ll die on.
Imagine my shock and horror when, at a recent digital marketing event, I encountered a growing variety of marketers who visibly grimaced on the mention of email marketing.
“Ugh, email marketing—you mean spam?” was the final theme. Spam! My email marketer’s heart broke just a bit more day by day.
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But you understand what? They’re not fallacious. Too many organizations—particularly within the B2B and SaaS space—have abused email as a channel. Because it’s free, because you’ll be able to “deliver” a message that you must anyone with an email address, and since it’s “trackable” to see who engages, we’ve mistaken email’s true purpose—to construct a relationship between a brand and an individual—with our own selfish purposes—lead generation.
If your organization is losing trust in email marketing, or if email is not any longer an efficient channel for you, let’s consider what is perhaps amiss and how you’ll be able to fix it.
Email marketing isn’t free
Just because you will have someone’s email address doesn’t mean you need to email them. Getting an opt-in—a consented email address—has a price associated with it. Sometimes that’s an actual cost—the associated fee of promoting, or event engagement, or content syndication. Sometimes, that’s an intangible cost, just like the value of trust and relationship.
Every time you send an unexpected email, or one which an individual can’t deduce why they could have received this email from you, you’re putting the associated fee of email acquisition in danger. At best, they may delete and ignore your email. At worst, an unsolicited or unexpected email will trigger spam complaints and unsubscribes.
In short, in case your recipients can’t logic their approach to why you sent them this message, don’t send it in any respect.
It’s the connection, all the time the connection
Email just isn’t a lead generation tool. It is a relationship-building tool, designed for a two-way conversation between your brand and a human being. This is very true when you’re a service provider, because it is almost unattainable to “click to purchase” in B2B email. We don’t sell sweaters! B2B and SaaS organizations are working on long-term sales that involve many parties, fluctuations in budget and needs, and changes to the business that might impact timing. It is wholly unrealistic to expect anyone to “buy” directly from a B2B email.
Instead, ask yourself—what’s my opportunity to construct a relationship with this person? Is it providing them with the precise right article for what their intent signals say they’re researching? Is it to present them an invite to an event that closely aligns with their interests? Is it to teach them on a change out there?
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Email marketing should center on the recipient, not the sender. It doesn’t matter what your sales team desires to say to them, what value propositions you’ll be able to present or what you wish the recipient to do next (probably book a gathering).
What matters in email marketing is showcasing your brand as a trustworthy and reliable resource that will help your prospects and clients navigate their business with greater efficiency.
Timing is all the things
I once subscribed to emails from a clothing brand that I actually liked—only to receive an email with links to purchase a brand new sweater each day.
In email marketing, less is more. Send something precious only when you will have something useful to send.
Gone are the times when a newsletter has to exit on Tuesday at 11 a.m. because “that’s what we’ve all the time done.” Gone are the times when you must include five content slots. Only have one thing to say? Just say that. Don’t have anything noteworthy this Tuesday? No have to send an email.
When you tailor your frequency to match the actual needs of your recipients, you will have more room to send essential communications without noise or distraction, and overall, you’ll see higher engagement with the emails you do send.
No blasting, please
List management is just as essential as minimizing noise. Effective email marketing is tailored to the particular audience—a general rule of thumb is that you need to rarely have an occasion to send an email to everyone in your list directly.
Think about how you’ll be able to segment your audience and get creative. You might consider:
- High intent topics.
- Titles and/or roles.
- Previous engagements and interests.
- Industries.
- Regions.
- Clients versus prospects versus open opportunities versus lost clients.
The handiest messages are those intended for specific people and groups.
In short, email marketing continues to be one among the top-performing marketing channels by way of revenue generation, but not since it’s doing any real generation. Email marketing works best as a type of relationship nurturing, and the more you tailor the correct message to the correct person at the correct moment, the better your email program will perform.
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