We have often discussed email campaigns as a key topic on our blog. The reason is simple – email, when used properly, can be a very effective way to generate qualified leads for a fraction of the cost of other marketing activities.
We return with some more tips on how MSPs can effectively use this communication channel to improve engagement with their B2B clients.
The success of an email marketing campaign can be measured via several performance metrics. This article will provide a few tips to help you improve two ultimate metrics: Open Rates and Click-Through Rates (CTRs).
Checklist to improve Open Rates:
Subject Line & Preview Text:
When coming up with an email campaign, you should start with the objective of the campaign and the value you are giving your audience and the subject line should reflect that in a brief and enticing way.
As a marketing company, we found using a question as a subject line piques the curiosity enough for the reader to want to open it. Just like Jeopardy, make sure the question is loaded with enough information to be the answer itself.
For example: As an MSP, you want to uncover potential clients for your remote monitoring and management service for LAN or you want to introduce your new Cyber Security solution to your existing client base.
Traditionally you would be tempted to use a subject line like “Remote Monitoring or Management Service” or “Introducing Cyber Security Solution for Your End Points”. While these are all good subject lines they might exclude the audience that likes to “read a book by its cover”.Try something like this: Are you losing productivity due to system downtime? Or Are your end-points protected against malware?
Helping your target audience identify their pain-point in the subject line will not only ensure a better open rate but also provides you with more qualified leads.
List:
Make sure the content you have prepared in the email is relevant to the audience.
Spending your time cleaning your list, segmenting, adding tags can go a long way and help you target the right groups of recipients for each of your campaigns.
For instance, you have an interesting update for your Healthcare clients and this may not be relevant to clients/leads in other verticals. In this case, it’s best to add an Industry tag to your contacts and only send the email to those who are in the Healthcare industry.
Checklist to improve CTRs:
After ticking all the Open Rate checklist, it’s time to work on your email.
Email Content:
Before writing anything, you must have in mind what the objective of the email campaign is and the topic you will focus on.
You may be wondering, what topic to write about. Ask yourself this:
- What does your audience want to know?
- What are your customers’ pain points and how to you or your solutions can solve them?
- What industry news may affect your audience?
- What anticipated challenges your audience may face?
- Etc.
Once you give your audience Aha moments, it’s more likely they would like to find out more and click on the colorful buttons you want them to click on.
Copy:
Subject line and email copy: Ultimately, the subject and copy should align. Looking at the subject line, your audience should be enticed and have an idea of what they will get in the email itself and the copy should satisfy their curiosity with a relevant, deep-dive answer.
Personalization: Things as simple as the First Name can be effective on a large scale. Remember, you can place personalization not only in your email copy but also on subject lines or preview texts.
Tone for B2B: While the copy for B2C connects with the audience through an emotional level, the B2B audience is completely opposite. You should keep your copy direct, factual and logical. At the same time, highlighting important numbers or important phrases can catch the recipients’ attention and lead them closer to clicking your buttons.
Images:
Have you heard this saying: “a picture is worth a thousand words”?
Inserting images can be a sweet way to highlight and shorten what you want to say.
We have 2 notes for you:
- Image size: How to limit the file size and have crisp-looking images at the same time? Check the optimized specs for the email platform you use.
Your images will look perfect with the 1200px width for MailChimp, for example. Be sure to resize images before uploading to the MailChimp gallery as using their built-in image editing tool may not give you the image quality you want.
If you are using Constant Contact, you may want to save your images as PNGs instead of JPEGs as PNGs look better once uploaded. - Alt-text: Recipients may not see images by default. Instead of seeing your well-designed images, all they see are the alt-texts. Therefore, it’s a good idea to rename/insert meaningful alt-text to every image. It doesn’t help much if your email reads “Untitled 1 Final”.
Call-to-action:
To some degree, emails are similar to landing pages. Would you just put a Call-to-action button at the very end of your page where 2% of the visitors scroll to?
If your email is long and the call-to-action may not be visible, place 2 – 3 buttons strategically under sweet pieces of content you put in your email just to remind your audience about the deal you are offering or that they can learn more with just a single click.
Social:
Email Campaigns should go hand in hand with your overall marketing efforts. You have got eyeballs on your emails, why don’t you also direct them to your content on social media as well?
Include social media buttons at the bottom of your email templates.
The relationship between your brand and your audience can be established and built through multiple channels and once they’ve known and engaged with your brand, open rates and click-through rates will start escalating.
