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Is Social Replacing Email? Here’s How You Can Make Sure it Doesn’t

Posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 by admin

Lately there’s been a lot of speculation around whether or not social media networks are replacing email marketing as a channel for nurturing customers. Both are excellent ways to keep your customers interested in you and coming back for more services. However, several email-marketers are convinced that social is superior because users are now spending more and more time on social media and less time on their email accounts. It’s true—according to a Nielsen survey by BBC News, one in every 11 minutes of a web user’s time is spent on social networking sites and blogs. Does that mean social is replacing email? Absolutely not.

It simply means that as a digital marketer, you must work even harder to deliver email messages that are effective and engaging.

Yes, perhaps consumers are spending more time on their social accounts than their email accounts, but that doesn’t necessarily mean social is more effective at driving conversions, leads, and ROI…especially in the B2B sector. Email is still the dominating form of communication for businesses. Many companies in the B2B sector find that email is far more effective and generates more traffic than social media does. In fact, an email marketing census by Econsultancy reported that 70% of responding companies found that email was excellent for ROI.

The problem with email marketing is not social media—it’s poor execution. Users are constantly bombarded with messages from marketers, and most get deleted before they are even opened. Why? Because the volume of messages being received is simply overwhelming. You must make your emails stand out from the sea of offers in our inboxes.

Here are some tips to make sure your emails get opened:

1. Send Your Messages in the Afternoon

What’s the first thing you do when you get to work? My assumption is that after you’ve settled into your office desk with coffee and maybe breakfast, you turn on your computer and check your email. Every marketer is anticipating this, and therefore most emails are sent out in the morning. As a result, users are greeted with a massive list of emails that they must sort through. This is the time when users are most selective—they keep what they need and delete what they don’t. Send your emails after lunch. By now, their inboxes are sorted and your message is more likely to be opened.

2. Offer Exclusive Benefits for Opening your Message

Give your customers a reason to continue to open your emails. Offer exclusive benefits that can’t be found on social sites. Whether it’s a coupon, discount code, or pass to your next event, make sure you reward your customers for being loyal to your email campaign.

3. Quality Over Quantity

Sending an email every day is a sure way to encourage unsubscibes. Instead of sending out as many email messages as you can, try condensing your emails into one high-quality, informative newsletter that will provide much more worth to your customers. Remember, consumers are receiving emails from businesses every day. Focus your efforts on creating a solid engaging newsletter that your customers will look forward to every week. Keep your emails fresh with new offers, quick tips, and helpful articles that your customers will find useful.

4. Don’t Send Messages on Monday

In HubSpot’s The Science of Email Marketing, researchers found that people are most likely to unsubscribe from email lists on Monday and Tuesday…it would make sense then, that the click through rate of an email is high on Wednesday and on the weekends. Why might that be? One can only speculate, but I’m willing to bet that most people unsubscribe on Mondays for the same reason they delete messages in the morning. Countless marketers are expecting consumers to open their inboxes on Monday morning when they get to work, and they want their email to be the first one opened. Instead, consumers are met with piles of emails…and they decide that it’s time to clean up their subscriptions.

5. Be on the Offense

Unsubscribes are a part of life. Consumers might be loyal readers one minute and the next they’ve found a newer, hotter newsletter to subscribe to. My advice is not to waste energy trying to get them back (unless of course you have the energy and money). Instead, take an offensive approach. Always focus efforts on drawing in new subscribers. Promote your email newsletters through an integrated campaign. Encourage subscriptions through your Facebook and Twitter, be sure to have a subscription button on your website, and ask for emails from attendees at company events.

References:

The 3 Commandments of Email Marketing Failure: Foolproof ways to make recipients unsubscribe

Posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2012 by admin

I like taking good care of my possessions. I want to show my things how much I value them by keeping them clean, cared for and in tiptop working condition. And my inbox is no different. Anytime my inbox starts to feel overloaded with hordes of emails I don’t care to read, I cut the wheat from the chaff and go on an unsubscribing spree.

In order to understand why we, the recipients, unsubscribe from emails, it is important to first take a look at what compels us to subscribe in the first place. (more…)

The Effectiveness of Email Marketing for Events

Posted on Monday, October 17th, 2011 by admin

Last week we participated in a joint webinar with B2B Magazine and NCM Fathom called How to Double Your Event ROI by Infusing Digital Best Practices. Several attendees asked some really good questions, and we figured we would take the time to answer them individually.

The first question we decided to tackle was this one:

Even through Email is the most popular I am questioning its effectiveness. It seems like i send out hundreds of emails but turn out to events is often low. Any input?

My first question would be: Is your list properly segmented so that you’re emailing the right people?

For example, say you’re a retailer of sporting goods and you’re holding a local bicycle maintenance training session in a couple of weeks. You sell all kinds of sporting goods–from kayaks to hiking boots to bicycles. Ideally, you would know what your email newsletter registrants were interested in, such as camping or cycling based on their previous purchases and any other information you’ve gathered during the newsletter registration process. Ideally you would also know where they are located. So if you’re sending out an email about a bicycle maintenance event held in, say, Portland, you’re targeting customers who A) have purchased cycling-related gear and B) who live in Portland.

Next, my suggestion would be to perform some A/B testing. How good is your subject line? Is your email strictly image-based or does it contain a good mix of text and images? Are you personalizing your emails? What day are you sending them on? Little tweaks can see increases (and decreases) in open and click through rates, so just like you would perform A/B testing on your website, you should perform A/B testing on your emails.

Something else to consider is whether or not your event appeals to your audience. This goes beyond segmenting your list and takes a look at personas. Do you know who your target personas are? You have to know your audience–and what your audience is and isn’t interested in–in order to effectively market anything. It does you no good to market an event to an audience that’s interested in something else entirely.

Email marketing can be a tricky thing. I’ve personally seen positive and negative responses to event email marketing, and can confidently say that a lot of it is simply nailing your subject line, having great content that excites and engages your audience, and making sure you’re marketing to the right people. Sometimes, even when all of those things are spot-on the response still isn’t what you would hope it would be. It’s unfortunate, but sometimes there are external factors, such as conflicting events (such as having two webinars scheduled at the same time on the same day on the exact same subject), meetings to go to, people out on vacation, etc. As marketers, the only thing we can truly control is our message and our list, but if we properly cultivate and maintain those two things, as long as being aware of who we’re targeting and what our competition’s up to, we should be able to see positive results.