Q&A Follow Up From All-Star Email: Best Practices in B2B Email Marketing

Feedback from our last webinar, "All Star Email: Best Practices in B2B Email Marketing" has been fantastic! You can view a recording here, but there were a few great questions we ran out of time for at the end of the webinar. Here they are:

Are there best practices you would recommend to ensure that your email makes it through SPAM filter? Are there services/sites that you can use to test your e-mail for SPAM rating?
This is a great question,as just because your ESP marks an email as "delivered" it doesn't mean it went into the recipient's inbox. You could have been trapped in the SPAM filter. CAN-SPAM compliance is the first and best thing to get you past the SPAM blockers, but there are no guarantees, and deilverability success is going to require some work. One thing that you can do is remind people to whitelist your address so that they can guarantee your emails will come through ... but of course, this doesn't always help you. Especially if they are receiving the email from you for the first time. So, keep the best practices from the webinar in mind (avoid too many images, pay attention to your text-only emails, etc), check and see if your ESP has any tools or services centered around proofing your emails for deliverability before they go out, and consider hiring a deliverability firm like ReturnPath if your concerns are very serious, as they have seedlists with all the major ISPs (including the B2B ones) that show you how well your emails are performing across all of the major email providers.

Do you have a point-of-view with regard to html vs. text-based emails?
This is actually a point of contention in many companies. A favorite technique of mine used to be to create an HTML email (so that I could reap all of the benefits of reporting/opens/closes from my ESP) that looked like the regular emails I send out of Outlook. I was absolutely convinced that this was the best way to go, and that images were bad. Until I started testing emails with images, that is. In my opinion, what really matters most for driving an "open" is a combination of the FROM label and the subject line. Do they know you and is the offer compelling? After that, you goal is to drive a "click" and what really matters most to drive that click is the content. Well-formatted, informative content that shows them exactly what they expected to see when they opened the email is going to drive that click. Oftentimes the best way to present an idea or get someone interested is with images. Food for thought ... my boss prefers to send text-centric emails, but the ones he shows me as examples of what caught his eye are typically nicely formatted emails with compelling images. That's the long answer. The short answer is the usual one ... test both and see what works better for your audience.

If you conduct monthly webinars as an offer on your web site, is it appropriate to send an invitation email on a montly basis to people on your house list who have not responded or signed up previously? Or, does that risk "list burnout?"
If you are offering good, new content to your audience on a monthly basis then letting them know about will in no way "burn them out." If you are sending them monthly invitations to a "demo webinar" that is the same thing, month in and month out then you will burn them out. New content is king! If you create good, new content that people will like then your list will be safe from burnout.

Is there a "best" day/time to email? What is considered a "good" open rate for monthly B2B email via house list?
Conventional wisdom says Mondays and Fridays are not good for email campaigns. On Mondays people are more likely to delete without reading as they get up to speed from the weekend, and Friday people have "checked out" and are focused on wrapping up what they need to finish before the weekend. That being said, it might be a good idea to try out a mailing on a Monday or a Friday, since you might have less competition in the inbox. The best way to find out? Test, of course! Don't be afraid of Mondays, don't be afraid of afternoons or early mornings. Every house list is unique! I even heard someone speak once regarding their email campaigns to doctors, selling medical equipment. The best time to email a doctor? Late nights and weekends. That's when they check their email, because they are not with patients. As far as open rates go, there is no "industry standard." If it is a cold list I am happy to get 5-8% opens. My house list (who is familiar with me) can approach 20% with the right offer, but I'm happy with 12-15% if I can get it. Honestly I think it is more important to focus on what you wanted to accomplish with the email rather than how many people opened it, and go from there.

Is there a CanSpam requirement re: the time period you have to remove someone from list. (i.e. from the point of unsubscribe, when do you need to remove them by)?
We didn't know the number off the top of our heads in the webinar, but it is 10 days. Thanks to all the folks who wrote in.

Comments

[Erin Jacobs]

Thanks everyone for letting me be your guest on the webinar. I hope we shared some great information. One lucky attendee, from VendorNet, receive a free email newsletter consultation this morning. I can't wait to see the next issue.

Don't forget to ask yourself if there is something in the email for the recipient to learn, gain, or enjoy!

[oreillette bluetooth]

I believe that B2B E-mail can be one of the most cost-effective tools for a marketer. Everyone should Keep in mind that business-to-business e-mail campaigns are all about providing relevant content in order to build brand awareness and trust.

[iimiss.com]

Email business and newsletters may be beatific with added aplomb for beneath than a lot of of the competition