Universally, marketers love to use e-mail marketing for nurturing and cultivating future opportunities with their target audiences. On the other side, I’ve heard numerous speakers and bloggers declare e-mail marketing dead. That’s simply not true.
E-mail is a one-to-one medium, nothing more, nothing less. The development of an effective e-mail program depends on how much you know about your target audience and how well you use that information to tailor a relevant message. The key is message relevance and program execution.
For example, I get some numerous e-mails from companies that know me (in some cases I’m their customer!) but their e-mails don’t show it. Their "creative" and graphics laden e-mail messages don’t speak to my concerns at all. So each irrelevant message (my vendors and potential partners) send is basically programming me to delete future messages from them.
My point? Be relevant with each e-mail message. Your objective should be to take full advantage of the unique characteristics of e-mail in creating meaningful communication that is at once attention-getting and informative… in a style easily perceived to be directed exclusively to me, the recipient. It should feel like it came from a human being not a mailing list.
Here are a couple of good resources on e-mail marketing that came out this week:
If you have a larger audience, this article explains some testing concepts to improve your messages. BtoB Online: E-mail testing
MarketingSherpa just released their annual report on e-mail marketing. Be sure to read their free executive summary, it contains useful tips for B-to-B lead generation. You can download a free executive summary of the e-mail marketing report(pdf).
Hi Brian,
Testing is definitely a smart move. I’ve found that ConnectDirect has good tips on avoiding common mistakes in email marketing:
http://www.connectdirect.com/10mistakes/
All the best,
Sridhar
Excellent post.
We are hearing mutterings of decreased response in the UK too. Email marketers must rise to the challenge, test subject lines, test timings, test offer, test creative. Pushing out the same newsletter month in month out with the same ‘content’ to your entire base will not cut it.
Being lazy with email marketing is a good way to fail. You just can’t cut any corners anymore. The worse your email marketing becomes, the more costly it becomes and runs the risk of people accidentally labeling you a spammer.
Email isn’t a 1-to-1 communication tool if the emails sent have no personalization. Then it’s simply a broadcast channel that may or may not connect with the receiver.
If the business is high end complex sales, why dare sending a mass email that “Seems” like it’s personalized when you could just send personalized emails? How many prospects does each individual sales person have? Would it really be that hard to do this right?