Email Marketing

Despite rumors of its demise, email marketing remains a workhorse for B2B marketing. In fact, 95 percent of B2B marketers use it. Marketers consider it to be the best channel for distributing content, and it also generates revenues. According to Fast Company, for every dollar invested in email marketing, there is a $43 return. That’s a staggering 4,300 percent ROI.

If B2B email marketing is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

So how do you maximize your chances of reaping that $43 return … or perhaps even more? Here are some best practices that can increase your chances for B2B email marketing success. 

As the account-based marketing (ABM) phenomenon gathers steam, sales and marketing professionals need to add the human touch to their communications. After all, ABM is all about communicating with individual prospects or accounts as a market. Last time, I wrote about how to craft outbound calls for ABM. Now, let’s move on to emails.

Because executives are deluged with emails that clamor for their attention, communicating via email marketing to large groups is no longer as effective as it was in the past. To cut through the clutter and get attention, emails must be personal and relevant. These emails must feel like they are written by one person to another. There’s no need for fancy designs and images that involve HTML code because plain text is as personal as it gets. 

Email marketing isn’t dead, but to make it work you need a sound email marketing strategy.

Email marketing is actually alive and kicking harder than ever. The Q1 Email Trends and Benchmarking Report by Epsilon reports that open rates in Q1 2014 climbed 5.7% over the previous year.

That’s good news, but how do you increase your response rates? Like everything else in marketing today, it requires processes and advanced systems that enable you to deliver relevant and timely content to prospects and customers. Also, rather than thinking of email marketing in a vacuum you have to blend it with other marketing tactics, such as telemarketing, for optimal results.

One of the most rewarding aspects of email marketing is that, unlike its more glamorous cousin, social media, it’s measurable. This means you can analyze results and work for continuous improvement.