Email marketing faq's

Email personalisation involves using subscriber data to create highly targeted campaigns. This means you can be specific – segmenting your campaigns to target particular groups or demographics.

There’s also an opportunity to differentiate. In this digital world of automated chat bots content that feels tailored to the needs of an individual will stand out from the crowd and have more impact.

The pinnacle of personalisation is probably account based marketing: a scenario that involves focussing on an individual – usually someone of high importance with a specific message or request.

Building your list

The biggest challenge of email marketing is building a subscriber list in the first place. This means mastering your on-page SEO to drive organic traffic to your website – at which point you can target visitors with special offers, downloadable guides and other valuable content.

Benefits of B2B

Building B2B email lists is arguably easier because GDPR requirements are more forgiving. Provided there’s legitimate interest you can add a business contact to your distribution list (adding an unsubscribe link is mandatory).

The best time to email B2B customers varies depending on the target sector. It also depends on the recipient’s job role. A C-suite leader is more likely to be active online much later than a middle manager – who will probably clock off early.

Experimentation is key here. That’s why A/B testing is so important. Try sending messages on different days and times then compare open rates and click through volumes to see which campaigns got the best traction.

Most importantly, be consistent. Eventually your target audience will get used to seeing your brand name in their inbox – and, if your targeting and messaging is on point, start to expect it.

Email marketing costs are lower compared to other channels – allowing smaller businesses with limited budgets to interact with their target audience.

Unlike social media or Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing, email is your channel. You can talk to customers 1-1 and without competing toe-to-toe with your rivals.

Email alone is insufficient, though. Using a combination of on-page (like blogs) and off-page (for example, social media) strategies will be needed to drive traffic to your website in the first place.

You can embed video directly into an email. But we’d advise against doing this – for the simple reason that Gmail, Outlook and other providers don’t support this function.

Even if an email provider permits embedded video the chances of your message ending up in spam or are ridiculously high.

Instead…

• Embed a GIF of your video that shows a short preview of your content
• Insert a still image instead that directs to your video when clicked on

Which email marketing platforms are best?

Finding what works best for your business is important. But, as a general rule of thumb, the top three email clients are arguably:

• Overall: Mailchimp – because its easy to use and includes the features most small businessed need
• Automation: ActiveCampaign – because it includes a huge range of automations for you to personalise
• All In One: Hubspot – because it boasts such a wide rangef of tools and insightful reports

Segmenting is about splitting your subscriber list into clearly defined groups. Age, location and budget are three factors your business might take into account during this process.

Segmenting means you can target customers using the right messaging, rather than pumping out generic content and hoping the law of numbers will evince some high quality leads.

To segment you could…

• Dig into email reports to discover what customers are clicking on
• Ask customers what they’re interested in – you’d be surprised at how many respond
• Compartmentalise your list according to subscribers’ job roles