You know the old adage that it can take up to 20 marketing contacts before your target will engage. In our blog article ‘Do you know who is visiting your website? Do you use registration forms?’ Scorchsoft explored how to start to get a view of who is visiting your website by using registration forms. However, once you have a view how are or will you stay in contact with your visitors, customers and prospects? Do you, or are you, planning to use emails, telephone calls, newsletters, social media dialogues or maybe something else? Clearly nothing is likely to be as productive as face-to-face meetings but it is unlikely that you have the spare capacity to be able to spend face-to-face time with every customer as much as you would like to; especially as your business and the number of customers grows.
According to a Marketing Benchmark Survey, by MarketingSherpa, in August 2011 on average, B2B organizations allocate:
13% of their marketing budgets to website design, management and optimization, while around 12% goes to email marketing.
So for many email marketing, including newsletters, is an important method for staying in-touch. But there are many things to consider in achieving results from your emails and newsletters. For example it is important that you apply an ethical and considered approach that respects every time you engage, that the engagement is of real value to the reader and that you don’t end-up spamming email recipients. If you ignore the best practices you are likely to do the opposite of what you are aiming to achieve; you’ll alienate your readers and end-up behind spam filters. This was indicated in research by Emailvision in January 2013 which indicated that 75% of UK consumers would resent a brand after being bombarded by emails and 71% cite being sent unsolicited messages as a reason to become resentful – This indicates the importance of getting your email marketing right and securing permission to engage and keep your customers up-to-date.
Another factor contribution to success are the factors that contribute to you emails delivery. Econsultancy / Adestra Email Marketing Census in March 2012 highlighted that 53% of companies consider clean, up-to-date lists as having the biggest impact on improving email deliverability. The other factors impacting delivery, identified within Census, being as shown below:
Email Delivery Census March 2012
Overcoming the delivery factors above your email or newsletter arrives in the recipients email box. As they travel on the train into work they decide to use the time to read their emails. Grabbing their Smartphone they open your email to find that it doesn’t read well as it hasn’t been optimised for mobile devices. The EConsultancy/Adestra Email Census highlighted that just 25% of business are currently optimising emails for mobile. Recent statistics from Knotice found that 41% of all emails are now being opened on mobile devices; 29% opened on Smartphones and 12% on tablets.
So your emails have been delivered and your recipients can access them from any device as your emails are optimised for desktop or mobile access. But how can you maximise the amount of people opening your emails and the amount of people clicking through them to visit your website?
One of the most important areas to ensure maximum email opens is the subject field. The description you give will significantly influence whether the email is opened or not. Once your email has been open it is important the content is of value otherwise your readers will unsubscribe and the permissions you previously gained could be lost. Having the right level of content within the email with the appropriate hooks and links back to your website will help you maximise your click-through rates.
Want to improve your email marketing success? Why not get in touch
and we can look at what you are doing now and what you could be doing better.
There are a number of things to consider and if you are not sure where to start or what the rules are don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss.
Clicking on the image will give you more information on Scorchsoft’s Email Design and Management Services. Scorchsoft can help you to design, build and email your audience in a way that plays by the rules and avoids your emails from being marked as a spam. We can also help you optimise your emails for desktop or mobile access.
