In light of relatively new inbound, pull and permissive marketing techniques through blogs and social media platforms, email is fatiguing to say the least, and it's much harder than ever to get your B2B email marketing message through to your audience. Some would even argue it's past the point of no return in its effectiveness. And therefore if you haven't already combed through your e-marketing techniques and analysis diligently, then you are far behind. Let's face it, even if you have opted in to a harmless, newsy, cutting edge, content focused, added value newsletter, you will probably only have time to read that occasionally, if at all. And we haven't even started to discuss pushier, catchy, sales driven (& hidden!) hook emails.
So it's fairly evident that we are seeing an increasingly fine balance today when sending out your email message, combining more and more complex elements to ensure its effectiveness. With the increasing number of email apps and web browsers out there and their sophisticated blocking tools (including WEB BASED, eg. Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc., DESKTOP based, eg. Outlook, Lotus etc; and MOBILE, eg. Blackberry, Windows Mobile etc.), how do you find the ultimate balance for your message to get through and be read? With more and more difficulty for sure. But to maximise your message being received well, there are a number of simple methods to prevent the madness. The first is delivery, subject lines and giving yourself the best possible chance that a message actually gets read.
So what steps can YOU take to actually getting your email opened?
1. The admin basics/essentials: Add a whitelist filter link with @yourdomainname.com link AND proactively include your email address for the recipient to add to their address book by clicking on it. This will allow all future emails from your name to cut through their spam/junk filters. And their programme will subsequently identify you as legit.
2. "From" line: Use a consistent 'real' name and one which your audience recongises, this gives your email 'authenticity', test/sample different names intelligently earlier in your campaign. Well over half of email recipients the 'from' line determines whether they will delete or open an email.
3. "Subject" line: Must be kept short and simple -> 40 characters max with spaces, 5-8 words (short subject lines significantly outperform longer ones) and incorporate the immediate benefit of 'opening' the email. You can see what not to do by collecting a bunch of SPAM emails and do the opposite! If you must capitalise and punctuate do this carefully. I'd also TEST, TEST & TEST(!) subject line variations splitting your audience data. And then don't forget to analyse the trends after at least 3-4+ days lag time.
4. Scanning Emails before sending: In light of the various and differing email app formats/web browsers mentioned in Para 2 above, you can run a compatibility test by using your own email software to run a scan on recipient email apps/web browsers. Most decent programmes will have this tool and although it might come at a small cost, it will save you lots of time/cash in the long run. So failing to prepare here is preparing to fail!
