Delivered. Opened. Clicked. A step-by-step guide to better email marketing

Email marketing is one of the most powerful ways for B2B brands to get their offering in front of prospective customers, and prompt them to take an action that turns them into a valuable marketing lead.

• 59% of B2B marketers cite email as their top channel for revenue generation. (Source: Backlinko)
• 31% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads – (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
• 77% of B2B buyers prefer to be contacted through email more than double any other channel. – (Source: Sopro)

But successful email marketing is about much more than crafting a compelling message and sending it to your database. There are lots of hoops to jump through if you want to ensure your marketing emails not only land in the inbox, but actually get opened – and hopefully actioned too.

In this blog, we’re going to explore the best practices – and cardinal sins – of email, offering a comprehensive guide to ensure you don’t breach data protection rules, trigger spam filters or prompt unsubscribes from your audience. Read on to learn:

• How to grow a healthy email database
• How to boost your reputation and hit the inbox every time
• How to segment your database more effectively
• How to boost engagement for better opens & clicks

First things first: How to establish a healthy email database

Not so long ago, it was quite easy for businesses to grow their email database – email addresses could be harvested from any and all communications with potential customers, and even scraped from the web.

Then GDPR came along and changed everything, making it essential to have consent before sending someone an email, or retaining their data for marketing purposes. Many businesses were left with huge lists of email contacts with no idea where they actually came from or whether they were legitimate to use.

Today, it’s essential to have a ‘clean’ database of active, relevant and consenting email addresses in order to successfully conduct email marketing campaigns that don’t raise red flags around GDPR and spam. Cleaning your data is a daunting and often laborious process, but is essential if you want to avoid deliverability problems down the line.

How to clean your email database 

Whatever email management system you’re using to create and send marketing emails, it should have some basic tools to help you complete the following steps for a clean email list:

1. Identify and remove hard bounces (invalid email addresses)
2. Identify engaged and disengaged subscribers
3. Send a re-engagement email to your disengaged subscriber list
4. Remove disengaged subscribers who didn’t reply or opt in
5. Repeat every 3-6 months

How to grow and keep it clean

OK, so now you’ve got a clean database, how can you grow it while making sure it stays clean? Here are some tips:

• Avoid bought email lists, since these are typically infested with bad email addresses, leading to a high unsubscribe rates and abuse complaints 
• Use double opt-in – ask users to verify their email address after they register for your mailing list. This helps ensure the authenticity of the email address and reduces the bounce rate.
• Improve segmentation to ensure that your most engaged users are appropriately grouped together and the right customers get the right message, at the right time
• Make it easy to unsubscribe, so you stay compliant
• Ensure your website has the right landing pages and sign-up forms in easy-to-access locations, with compelling CTAs to entice users to join your mailing list.

Step 2:  Boost your email reputation

Your sending reputation is the key factor that determines whether your emails land in the inbox or end up in the recipient’s spam folder. Sending reputation is based on your sending history and behaviours, and is linked to your IP address and domain as well as metrics like bounce rate, engagement rate and spam complaints from users. Here are some tips to make sure yours is squeaky clean:

• Use domain authentication such as SPF to verify your emails at the point of origin, improving trust
• Ensure your domain DNS is properly configured. DNS MX and A records ensure other mail servers can communicate seamlessly with yours via the internet, while SPF, DKIM and DMARC records protect against spam and identity theft 
• Be consistent with sending – especially avoid sending large volumes of emails if you don’t normally. If you need to send to a large database, you should warm the data slowly by sending smaller batches to avoid raising red flags
• Make sure your email content is of good quality, and relevant to your audience, reducing the risk of spam complaints

Step 3: Segment your database effectively

Email segmentation means organizing your email database into groups of individuals with similar desires, priorities and needs – it’s the most effective way of making sure you send the right messages to the right people, instead of taking a blanket approach that can be perceived as spammy.

Effective segmentation will improve your sender reputation by enhancing engagement and preventing spam complaints or unsubscribes. But as a strategy, it’s often underutilised – especially in the B2B space. So how can your segment your email audience more effectively?

It’s most common for B2B companies to segment their database by customer lifecycle – perhaps into prospects, new customers, existing customers and lapsed customers. This is a good start, but doubling down on segmentation even more can be a powerful way to increase engagement and conversions. Here are some other ways you could consider segmenting your database:

Demographic

This means segmenting by factors like age, gender and income. It can be helpful when your audience is spread across generations, – for example, the tone that will resonate with an audience of 50-something professionals is very different from what a Gen Z audience will respond to, even if they’re buying the same product or service.

Psychographic

Psychographic segmentation means grouping your audience by shared psychological traits that can influence their purchasing behaviours – for example by personality, lifestyle or interests. This strategy is relevant even for B2B customers because it enables you to tailor your messaging in a way that is more likely to provoke an emotional response – for example, leveraging professional pain points or FOMO.

Behavioural

Segmenting by behaviour means looking at evidence of how the customer has behaved in the past – things like what they’ve bought and when, or which content they’ve interacted with on email. This gives you a greater understanding of what the customer is interested (or not interested) in, and allows you to tailor your email communications accordingly. Lead scoring models are sometimes used to segment by behaviour, assessing which customers are the most likely to convert before targeting them with specific email campaigns.

By priority – VIPs

This segmentation approach focuses on identifying and targeting segments of customers who consistently make high-value transactions – these are your VIP customers. You can reward VIP customers with exclusive incentives like personalised discounts to encourage continued spending, maximising revenue and increasing customer lifetime value.  

Step 4:  Increase engagement – get more opens and clicks

So you’ve managed to land your email in the recipient’s inbox – that’s the first hurdle. Now what? You need them to open that email, read the content and hopefully take action by clicking through to your website or getting in touch.

Today’s email inboxes are highly competitive places, so just getting your message delivered isn’t enough – it’s vital to make it attention-grabbing, actionable and memorable so your customer will be more likely to open it, and other emails you send in the future. Here are some tips to enhance engagement:

Write a killer subject line

The subject line is the most important piece of email copy because it’s the thing that entices the recipient to open – and without opens, you can’t get clicks. Subject lines should be:

• Succinct – 50 characters or less is optimal
• Honest & clear – free from clickbait or misleading information
• Intriguing – where possible, to leave the reader wanting more information

Avoid sensationalism – those all-caps, ‘ACT NOW!’ emails have been done to death and are a sure-fire way to turn your audience off. Offers and discounts are still one of the most successful ways to get your email opened, but should be used sparingly for maximum impact – try to think of other ways you can add value for the recipient. Use A/B testing to find out what your audience responds best to.

Don’t forget the pre-header

In addition to the subject line, inboxes also show a sort pre-header or summary of what’s contained in the email. If you don’t write this in your EMS, it will auto-generate – and this can be a missed opportunity to include some compelling messaging that will prompt an open. 

Personalise

These days email personalisation is about much more than adding the recipient’s name in the subject line or greeting – it’s about creating an email experience that feel tailored just for them.

While it’s not possible to deeply personalise every single campaign you send, think about the ways to add a personal touch where you can, such as:

• Making targeted recommendations based on previous behaviour
• Triggering automated emails after they meet certain milestones or take certain actions (e.g. abandoned cart)
• Showcasing their purchase or viewed product data in an interesting way

Email design has come a long way in the past decade, so if you’re still relying on plain text or not optimizing for mobile, your recipient is likely to feel short-changed. Pay attention to the look, feel and layout of your emails – use high-quality images, make sure information is broken down into bite-size chunks and write headers and titles that are interesting or even entertaining. Always test your campaigns before sending to make sure the email displays properly, and that all links are working.

If you want to go the extra mile, adding interactive content can really deliver the wow factor – animations, quizzes or scratch-to-reveal discount codes are just some ideas we’ve seen used to great effect.

Pay attention to CTAs

After the subject line, the copy you use for your calls-to-action is arguably the most important element of email marketing copy. CTAs need to be succinct and above all, clear – so the customer knows exactly what they’re being asked to do, and what to expect when they click.

CTAs are best used sparingly – having too many can lead to ‘analysis paralysis’, where the recipient has so many choices about what to do next, that they don’t know what to choose – and therefore, do nothing. One or two CTA buttons at most is best, with other desirable actions left as text links. You can experiment with where to put your main CTA – the bottom of the email is most common, but sometimes better results can be achieved by placing them above the fold.

Creative CTA copy can also be effective – instead of simply ‘Buy now’ or ‘Learn more’ you can try clever phrases like ‘Yes! I want one’ or ‘Curious? Read more’. Beware sacrificing clarity on the altar of creativity, however – it’s more important that your customer knows what to do, than to dazzle them with your wit.

Need help on email strategy?

If you’re struggling to get traction with your email campaigns and feeling fatigued at the thought of trying to implement the above advice on your own, why not let us help? Creative Media has a dedicated email strategy team with years of expertise helping B2B clients plan, build and execute high-converting email strategy that boosts conversions and brand loyalty. Get in touch today!