B2B email marketing: two critical improvements

MarketingSherpa just released a mammoth 500+ page instructional handbook on B2B marketing (which I'm slowly working through).

I was fortunate enough to get access to a pre-release webinar featuring the author (Anne Holland) and asked her about the key improvements B2B marketers could make to their use of email.

She had two main recommendations.

First, she notes, too many B2B marketers think their standard email newsletter is an email nurturing campaign.

"...that's not good nurturing. You're not giving them content based on where they are in the sales cycle. Not based on their job title or their industry and not based on whether they know anything about you or not."

Instead, Anne suggests putting new leads on specific email communication streams that reflect the characteristics of the lead...

"Prospects should be getting a different series of emails which are often not as newsy as the other ones. They may be something fairly evergreen that helps lead them through the buying cycle."

Anne's second recommendation is to avoid over-reliance on email alone. She says that a lot of marketers shifted to email in 2001 and it became "the sole, de facto communication channel for nurturing."

There are two risks with that single channel approach. First, deliverability issues...

"In B2B, filtering is a much bigger problem than most marketers realize. If you're being filtered at the corporate level, it does not show up on your delivery report. You don't know how much you're being filtered."

The second issue is that certain leads simply aren't great email users...

"Maybe they're high up and don't tend to check email very often. Or they only check it on their Blackberry. Or it's not their preferred method of communication."

So while email is great, you need alternatives, too...

"I believe you should always supplement nurturing emails with telemarketing and probably also personal direct mail and other touches. If the only way to hear from you again is via email you have a problem."

The handbook | Tags: b2b email marketing, marketingsherpa, anne holland, lead generation

Permalink | June 11, 2008 | 0 comment(s)
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