Monday, April 25, 2011

Sending B2B Email Marketing Campaigns?

If you are an email marketer, you are used to sending campaigns either B2C or B2B. In today’s article, we want to shed some light on how to successfully send a B2B email marketing campaign. To successfully sell B2B, you should be focusing on the long-term relationship built between your company and other companies. Here are some suggestions on how to strengthen B2B relationships:

1. Be personal. If you are used to sending email campaigns B2C, you are probably used to sending mass emails with very general subject lines. However, in order to gain the loyalty of another business, you need to prove to them that they are more than just a number on your email list. Try to make the emails sent to other businesses as personal as possible – include any information you may have: names, past purchases, dates, etc. Make it known that their business is important to you.

2. Develop solid groundwork. Trust is key when trying to establish a B2B relationship. Businesses will always choose to get their products from a company they know and trust over a company that they do not. Trust leads to relationships, and relationships lead to sales.

3. Go beyond the sale. Once you make the sale, your job is not finished. You want to continually follow up with the new client to ensure that their experience is ideal. Sending them regular emails with how-to instructions or just follow up questionnaires show them that you are concerned with their well-being. The more you can offer your customer, the more they will value your service.

Continue reading the KobeMail blog for insight in the email marketing industry.

Happy mailing!

Author: Peter Schirripa

Editor: Courtney Dillsworth

Monday, April 18, 2011

Revamping Your Current Email Marketing Strategy

The most successful email marketers will tell you that you must constantly update your email marketing strategy in order to stay relevant to your subscribers and up to date with the most recent technologies. Here at KobeMail, we have seen all different types of approaches. While different strategies work for different companies, we have listed a few suggestions below that apply to any company who uses email marketing:

1. Hire an email service provider. KobeMail helps make it easier for companies to email successfully. Some companies still use in-house mailing departments to handle their email marketing, but we would highly recommend outsourcing. The statistical research that ESP’s can offer cannot be matched by an in-house department.

2. Set up a regular schedule for your mailings. You want to send emails on a consistent basis so your users will anticipate an email from you. If you take a month off from mailing anything, your readers are going to forget about you. If you decide to send five emails in a week when you normally send only one, your readers are going to get annoyed, fast. Consistency builds trust and anticipation; two things that will boost your open and click through rates.

3. Build a custom template to use. In order to be noticed by your subscribers, you want to make sure that your emails are unique. Remain consistent with your mailings by using the same or a similar template for all mailings. Be sure not to use too generic of a template- be unique!

4. Focus on Reporting. Extensive reporting is available if you are using an ESP. However, many companies make the mistake of not really delving into their reports. Open rates, click-through rates, and A/B splits are just three of the many units of measure that every successful email marketer looks into deeply. Taking the time to analyze your reporting will allow you to optimize your campaigns and improve performance.

Continue reading the KobeMail blog for more insight on how to successfully manage your email campaigns.

Happy mailing!

Author: Peter Schirripa

Editor: Courtney Dillsworth

Monday, April 11, 2011

How to Run a Successful Contest via Email

Many of our clients here at KobeMail run contests via email. This is a great way to build lists, keep your readers engaged, and promote your business. However, just like any email marketing tactic, having a successful email contest takes proper planning and execution. Here are some steps that we have found to be imperative to take in order to run a successful contest campaign:

1. Define a specific goal. This step is important to keeping your campaign on target. You do not want to try to do too many different things with your contest. Your goal should be apparent throughout all of the mailings.

2. Define success metrics. Similar to the step above, you need to be specific about what you want to achieve from running the contest. Do you want to create a buzz on your social media accounts? Do you want to grow your email list? Do you want to add to sales?

3. Offer clear directions. While a successful contest can do great things for your email marketing strategy, a poorly managed campaign can be devastating. The rules for the contest need to be clearly defined and easy to understand for your subscribers. Once the rules are established, you should not change them at all. It is advised to run the proposed rules past your legal department to ensure compliance.

4. Promotion! Like any successful marketing campaign, promotion is a huge factor. Who is your audience? Once that is defined you can target your promotion. Do you use facebook and twitter? Do you take out ad space on similar sites?

5. Follow through. Once the winner(s) are determined, make sure to share the news with all contestants/readers. Be sure to follow up with the winner(s) with a personalized email congratulating them.

Good luck, and Happy Mailing!

Monday, April 4, 2011

Affiliate Marketing: How it Works

What exactly is affiliate marketing? What are the pros and cons and how does it affect you as email marketers? Allow this passage to help clarify the details of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. Reward sites or contest sites would be a good example of this.

The industry of affiliate marketing has four main aspects: the merchant (better known as the retailer or brand), the network, the publisher (better known as the affiliate), and the customer.

Affiliate marketing can overlap different forms of advertising, including SEO, display advertising, and of course, email marketing.

The main goal of affiliate marketing is to drive traffic from one website to another. This being said, affiliates play a significant role in email marketers’ strategies.

Affiliate marketing refers prospective clients to a specific service provider when the client is most interested in the provider’s service. This online marketing channel is of great advantage to advertiser service providers because they are only asked to pay after the prospective client is introduced to them. For firms looking to stay consistently profitable and in front of the shifting client base, connecting with the right consumers through an affiliate network is a low-risk investment worth considering.

To find out more about affiliate marketing, or to learn where you can connect with an affiliate, reach out to us through the comment section below or shoot us an email at support@kobemail.com

Happy mailing!