Forum:  http://www.marketingprofs.com/

Date: 4^th August, 2015

Key Speakers: Mr. Kevin Miller (VP- Solution Strategy & B2B Marketing Automation Expert, Salesfusion)

This write-up will explore the various facets discussed during the webinar and key conclusions that emerged. The objective of this webinar was to discuss the various ways in which email can be optimized better as a means of marketing.

Premise

Email has emerged as the component of digital marketing with the best derived ROI. Marketing research has also suggested that emails are opened most frequently by target audience and thus chances of conversion from leads to customers increases substantially. Enormous amount of useful data is also generated using this medium.

Trends

Certain key trends have emerged in the world of email marketing which are as follows:

$1·         Focus towards nurturing target audience rather than mass mailing towards huge quantity of data.

$1·         Customers’ behavior is tracked and engaged with content customized for the respective personas.

$1·         Quality of mailing list focused on rather than mere size.

$1·         Usage of mobile phones for campaigns and conversions has increased.

$1·         Sales representatives are now drafting personalized emails to key targets.

$1·         A funnel view approach is being taken towards data which is generating intensive business analysis.

8 ways to Improve

$1·         Email preference management

$1·         Proper list segmentation

$1·         Subject line best practices

$1·         Nurture marketing tips and tricks

$1·         Mobile- friendly versus responsive

$1·         Creation of newsletter

$1·         Recommendations for email delivery to inbox

$1·         HTML versus text-only emails

Email Preference Management

$1·         3 Ws need to be answered here- What, Where and Why.

$1·         What answers the kind of content that needs to be inserted within the email for marketing purposes.

$1·         It also seeks to determine the type or frequency of emails that will be delivered.

$1·         Where looks into the forms or landing pages to be associated with the promotions or website in general.

$1·         Why seeks to understand the reasons for the unsubscribe list and methods this can be rectified.

Recommendations

$1·         Preferences must be added to all web forms discretely as part of campaign.

$1·         Categories targeted must be broad but limited up to four.

$1·         Categorical emails must always start with introduction titled- “you are receiving this email because….”

$1·         Once form is completed, a thank you salutation mail is compulsory to acknowledge the receipt.

Proper List Segmentation

$1·         Must be based on demographics and behavior.

$1·         The corporate strategy of doing this is to align email content with buyer persona.

$1·         Customer behavior must be tracked ion following bases:

$1o   Periodicity & content of website visits

$1o   Responses to events and email campaigns

$1o   Percentage of data forms’ completion

Subject Line Best Practices

$1·         Words/ phrases such as ‘free’ must be avoided as they trigger spam filters.

$1·         Email content must be personalized.

$1·         Complete information must be provided to target audience.

$1·         Promotional emails must be minimized in frequency.

$1·         A/B testing is a proven method of conducting first hand business research.

Nurture Marketing Tips & Tricks

Concept of Nurture Marketing

$1·         Includes a series of automated communications over time frame decided

$1·         Mails decided upon behavior exhibited during campaign

$1·         Marketing and sales alignment in same campaign

Recommendations

$1·         Increased usage of preference management to tailor campaigns

$1·         Nurtures must not extend a maximum of six weeks before a performance review

$1·         Sales personnel must be included with brand ones to optimize this

Mobile Friendly v/s Responsive

There a four stages of having mobile responsive campaigns. The first is most basic and the fourth most advanced. The following illustration will better explain the same:

Creation of Newsletter

$1·         Email must act as sole field for signing up.

$1·         Use of external expertise of business consulting for newsletter content optimization.

$1·         Product promotion must remain subtle.

$1·         It will be useful to quote statistics or benchmarks of the respective industry.

$1·         Newsletter content must be short and precise.

$1·         Not more than one news letter must be dispatched in two weeks.

$1·         Open webinars must be promoted.

$1·         Widgets must always be included with blogs.

Recommendations for Email Delivery to Inbox

$1·         Attempt must be made to organically develop subscriber base

$1·         Avoid mailing more than once a week to list

$1·         Target audience must be given adequate information

$1·         Educational content must be mailed frequently including- white papers, webinars and blogs.

$1·         Avoid large images as mail headers

$1·         Also important text must not be put on some image as the audience cannot distinguish between spam or important material

$1·         Do not violate anti-spam laws

$1·         The file names of images must be contextually related to email subjects

HTML v/s Text-only Emails

Conclusion

Thus we have seen how emails can be used even more effectively as a tool for marketing.