Email marketing is well established as a key part of any marketing strategy, providing measurable results and a reliable platform for communication. However, according to a recent survey conducted by Econsultancy, 54% of respondents stated a top barrier to conducting effective email marketing is the quality of the company database.
We’ve put together our top eight tips all businesses can implement to increase their database with engaged and quality contacts.
1. Building the database
Having established that email marketing is important and all businesses should do it, the first step in starting your email marketing is to build a database.
2. Use other channel to promote sign up
- Most businesses will already have a network of contacts which are easy picking to convert into email subscribers
- Use your corporate email signature to direct attention towards the sign up form
- Promote newsletters on social media and, where appropriate, printed material can be a great source of data collection.
3. Embed a data capture form
Instead of linking to a sign up page, embedding the form keeps your readers on the page and engaged with the main website content.
4. Placement of the sign up form a/b testing
- Using the concept of Minimal Viable Marketing™, set the sign up form live and then test it
- Only test one variable at a time in order to draw actionable conclusions.
5. Keep the form short
- Don’t put all your work into researching clients/prospects. A simple name, address and company should be enough information for you to work on categorising the contact
- Remaining contact information can usually be found with an online search, where you will be able to identify job title, industry sector and influence level
- This is about making it as easy as possible to sign up.
6. Highlight benefits
Tell them what value they will get for signing up and how often it will be received. Are there events, news or industry insight? Remember, this is about the recipients perceived value, so it should be more detailed that ‘what we’ve been up to’.
7. Use the sign-up as a call-to-action
…after a blog post or case study. You’ve written lots of great content that is hopefully delivering people to your site. Use the sign up to capture their information and encourage future engagement with the business.
8. Vary content
Depending on where on the site the sign up form is, content should be varied. Placing the form on the case study page will call for a more corporate tone of voice. Therefore, the sign up form should show that more insights will come from emails rather than shorter blog posts.
A blog post reviewing your last events lends itself well to a call to actions to sign up – so you don’t miss out on future events.
In a nutshell
- Raise profile
- Make content targeted
- Don’t make your subscribers do the work
As the email database grow, businesses are able to take advantage of segmentation, delivering more targeted and personalised campaigns to recipients.
This is the future of email marketing. If you’re looking for advice on how to develop an integrated B2B marketing strategy, get in touch.