We came. We saw. We Spoke.

Editor’s Note: Spoke client and Grande Dame of marketing at OneCommand, Lindsay Leugers, steps lively through the good fight of email marketing. Ignored by many, despised by some, email has become the marketing channel we love to hate. It’s time to vanquish the foes of this venerable tool and put its virtues to work for good instead of evil.

Here’s a fact: email is a formidable marketing vehicle. It has not been squashed by spam legislation, it hasn’t been made obsolete by blog posts or tweets or text messages. Even the explosion of mobile and social channels hasn’t wreaked the havoc on email touted by some. Email is, however, fighting for its rightful place in today’s ever-changing online marketplace. This means that marketers who leverage email must do so more thoughtfully than ever before. Although the overall spend on email marketing pales in comparison to other media channels, the returns achieved consistently outperform these same media. To keep that trend going, it’s imperative we build strategies that prevent us from simply blasting out bland content because it’s fast and cheap.

Our approach should evolve over time and address the changing climate of the channel as well as the needs of our unique audiences. We engage in email marketing because it works. Period. Here are some tips to get even better results from your own campaigns:

Target.
Whether targeting current clients or prospects, there are many unique segments within these groups. Take common demographics for example. You should know which age groups purchase which products. You should know which regions you’ve penetrated with which products. You should know which gender responds best to which incentives. In these cases, knowledge is power. Using this intelligence, you should be able to target different segments of your subscribers with unique campaigns that call attention to what is most relevant to them — be it regionalized content, special coupons or overall design.

At OneCommand, for example, our entire email marketing strategy is rooted in recognizing the uniqueness of each of our clients. Since the majority of our customers are in the automotive retail market, we pay close attention to things like dealership franchise, location, the DMS and CRM they use, and even the sales and service volume of the store. These details help us deliver content that is specific and relevant — whether that involves sharing local or regional news and events content, or offering tips on how our solutions work with others the client already has in place.

Test.
Take the time to measure the variables that make your campaign more, or less, effective. Play with the subject line, the sending email address, the reply to address, links offered, the actual email content itself, more images and less copy vs. fewer images and more news articles, etc. Then, measure the differences to identify which is more effective. The best email marketing solutions will let you do this in real-time with A/B split testing features. Such a system will enable the delivery of essentially two different versions of your email based on the previously mentioned variables to a percentage of the total recipient list. Then, it will let you specify a time frame for the test, monitor the performance of each version, decide the more effective of the two and deliver the remainder of the emails accordingly.

In my opinion, Campaign Monitor* offers one of the best email solutions out there. I’m especially enamored with their testing features. In fact, I’ve developed a bit of an addiction. I perform A/B split testing at least once a week with different versions of the weekly news, tips and tricks we deliver to our current customers. Doing so has helped us to deliver more intelligently and has also opened up a bit of healthy competition amongst members of our marketing team. Doesn’t seem like placing bets on whether “A” will smoke “B” or vice versa would be all that fun, but I dare you to try it. Just this past week I closed my door and quietly did a victory dance to celebrate when a message delivered from me as the sender beat out the one coming from our CEO. What can I say? It’s the little things.

Measure.
The spectrum of open, click, bounce and unsubscribe rates is wide. Knowing where your campaigns stand on each of these fronts is critically important, but what long-term value does this information provide? Think about a monthly newsletter campaign. From your standard report, you may learn that 33% of your recipients opened the email, but how does this compare to the rate you measured last month or last year? You should be using these measurements to better understand your progress over time. Your email marketing tools should allow you to select campaigns to compare — helping to give you a better view of your rates and their improvement from, say, one month to the next. Armed with that information, you’ll then be ready to drill down into analyzing what made the difference such as time and day of send, subject, etc.

Measuring also helps you to predict trends. For example, this time last year, when the auto industry was facing its worst year in recent history, we lost a good deal of our customer base due to store closings, budget cuts and consolidation. Because I look at our subscriber list performance over time on a regular basis, I could see the writing on the wall. Our subscriber count was on its way to a big dip. To stem the loss, we introduced a weekly publication that offered best practice insights that were not necessarily linked to the use of OneCommand solutions. Instead, our new publication offered helpful bite-size treats in the form of general best practices and trends sprinkled with a little peer commentary. Though we did certainly see a decrease across our lists, the new subscribers we signed, and those we were able to retain with the new pub into, helped offset the losses.

Listen.
Give your subscribers a voice. Trust me, they have one and they will use it when prompted. Care about and respond to what they have to say, especially in terms of their subscription preferences. If you’ve not already established a way to pass control to the subscriber to manage their subscription—from the email address they provide you to the selection of campaigns or content types they wish to receive—you’re missing a critical piece of the email marketing puzzle. Recipients are far more likely to open, read and respond to a campaign that they’ve expressed interest in receiving. They appreciate being able to control what they receive instead of having only the age-old “subscribe or unsubscribe” options. Many email marketing engines will include the setup of a preference center for your subscribers that feeds directly back to your subscription lists — take advantage!

The idea of preference management is baked into OneCommand solutions, but it wasn’t something that we’d spent much time on in terms of our own marketing strategy. Until now. At OneCommand, we send a lot of email. We send weekly publications, monthly newsletters, system notifications, account management outreach, feature announcements, new staff introductions… the list goes on. We needed a solution that helped us manage the fact that not everyone wants everything. The preference center feature built into Campaign Monitor fits this bill perfectly.

Viva la...!
In summary, as marketers we have to take the time to really understand how this channel is most effective for our specific goals and objectives, and most importantly for our subscribers. I challenge that email marketing has become so second nature for most of us that we rarely give the measurements or the opportunities for improvement the attention they deserve. Change that today. Take stock of your efforts and your measure of success. Once you’ve done that and you feel good about your overall progress and go-forward strategy, think about mobile and social and how those exponentially growing channels can help your email make an even bigger splash.

*Disclosure: Spoke is a proud user of Campaign Monitor. Many of our clients use it with exuberant glee daily.

Follow up: We recently stumbled upon this piece on the Litmus blog. We found the numbers interesting and slightly alarming. Still, we know first-hand that you can improve your campaign success rate by following the suggestions in Lindsay’s post above and others. You might even consider using the Litmus toolset for testing your campaigns.

By the way, we’re not endorsing Litmus. Not because we don’t like it, but because we have’t tried it... yet.

Editor’s Note: Spoke heartily welcomes winggrrrl and digital diva, Janeile Cudjoe, who provides us with solid fundamentals for crafting your B2B web presence.

When not consulting to clients through her very own Zig !t Marketing, Janeile can be found blogging on the virtues of Web 2.0 at Janeile.com

It seems obvious why a proper web presence is necessary for a B2C operation. Their consumers are internet savvy online shoppers who have multiple reasons for whether or not they choose your business or not. However, a B2B company is somehow viewed differently. For some reason, their clientele is viewed as the traditional, white-shirt-black-tie types who rarely go online because they are too busy making things HAPPEN in the real world. Many B2B companies continue on with no or, even worse, a poor web presence that is not only dated, but boring and unhelpful. The fact that they can get by and still survive only reinforces the myth that a good web presence is not needed. The truth is that having a web presence that is dynamic, vibrant and on par with B2C Web 2.0 sites is beneficial in myriad ways such as increasing authenticity, brand assets, thought leadership and client relations.

Authenticity

Does anyone outside of your B2B operation know what your company is really like? Does your website clue anyone in to what you really do outside the context of overused phrases like “world-class” scattered about your site like a crime scene? Having a proper web presence means pulling back the curtain to the real you and giving your audience the opportunity to engage. Gone are the days when people were satisfied with talking to the nondescript ‘sales@b2bcompany .com’. Get rid of the glamour-shot, air-brushed, politically-correct website and get your picture taken sans makeup. If your smile is genuine, people will pay attention.

I know what you’re thinking – that this is all swell and dandy for B2C types, but not for B2B. As Rick Burnes of HubSpot said recently, “Lame excuse.” Authenticity in business is important because people like to work with real people. The idea that you’re somehow selling to a business and not a human being is ridiculous. Never forget that you’re not only targeting real people, but that your business needs to come across as a real entity too and not just some big nameless, faceless machine.

Leveraging Brand Assets

An online platform introduces a new channel to re-purpose content used in other marketing initiates and vice versa. The unanimous call online is that content is king. A deep fear of businesses everywhere is the time needed to generate that content. However, many already have access to great content — in offline marketing channels. If your marketing department is busting out fresh, engaging content for traditional media platforms on a regular basis, why not use some of that online to expand your reach and get more bang for the buck? Just be sure to optimize your content for the online reader, and use your analytics engine to discover what’s important to readers before refining your offerings.

Good content serves to increase positive brand equity. Think of it as another piece to the puzzle — one that supports all marketing channels.

Thought Leadership

If someone Googled your company today, what would they find? A disgruntled employee? A blank space where you should be? Or would they find content generated by your employees, and satisfied clients that set you apart as an industry leader? Okay, so maybe you’re not as big as Google and everything you say doesn’t come straight from the mountaintop on two stone tablets, but it doesn’t mean that you have no chance at being a leader in your field of expertise. We can all agree that our B2B enterprise should be known for something. So the question becomes, “What will it be known for online”? Something about your business will be found there; you have a chance to craft that in a positive way.

Thought leadership ties directly to leveraging your brand assets. If you have great content elsewhere and can re-purpose that content on the web, the chances of it getting around are not only better but will also add positively to your brand reputation. Craft your message carefully because labels fly fast and furious online. Develop content that is interesting and unique, and don’t forget to engage with those in your industry who are discussing related topics. In the Web 2.0 world, online engagement — with a point of view — adds to your reputation.

Customer Support/Client Relations

A proper web presence is going to boost your relationship with your clients. How? Have you ever been to a company website and felt uneasy about working with them because their site looked like it was built by the owner’s thirteen-year-old nephew who built it in exchange for an iPhone? Just as first impressions are important in real life meetings, so are the ones made online. A professional, first impression online is imperative to breaking the ice for prospective clients.

Secondary steps to developing good client relations can include having an FAQ page to address prospect’s questions, or live chat manned by your own staff. More subtle approaches may take the form of white papers and webinars, or addressing customer concerns and questions through social media platforms, including comments made on your corporate blog.

You do have a corporate blog, don’t you?

The name of the game is interaction, and this requires listening. You cannot develop a healthy relationship with clients without it. Your B2B company already does this offline; take it to the next level and make your web presence a relational experience.

Conclusion

The web is not just a playing field for B2C and ecommerce businesses, and it’s not just a platform to leave outdated content or plant one-way “look-at-me!” communication. Think of your B2B web presence as a living organism. It needs to make a good impression, listen, be authentic and leverage its brand assets to become a thought leader in your industry. It should integrate with existing marketing endeavors offline so that they compliment each other. The days of just getting by on a passive, boring or nonexistent web presence are over. Your clients are online whether you believe it or not, and they’re looking for authentic, valuable and actionable resources. If your online properties don’t offer that, someone else’s will.