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Having difficulties getting your message across?


Once again the summer break is over for most of us and the return to work means facing a groaning inbox with the inherent angst of ensuring no important or interesting messages are missed. Email overload is a common complaint, however, from a marketer's perspective it remains one of the primary means of communication (it is estimated that an average marketing department spends about a quarter of its time on EDM). We have already discussed in previous issues of this newsletter the fact that email as a sole means of communicating your marketing messages is no longer as efficient as it used to be (see the NL for March 2012 ).So what can be done to optimize your campaigns?
 

1. Getting the right target:

It is important to be able to identify the right target for your message, but also to be able to access up to date information on it. Businesses change. Rapidly. Contacts, mail addresses, positions, company names and even core markets can evolve in a short space of time. It is important to use reliable data to maximize campaign ROI and to save time.The more information you can access on a company the greater precision you can apply to target creation.

2. Getting the mail opened:

Open rates for the B2B communication in the IT industry vary depending on the target country. In our experience we see higher open rates in the Nordics and Germany, where the average open rate is over 25%, than in the UK for instance, where the average open rate is around 15%. France, Spain and Italy show roughly the same open rate averages 17-20%, with higher open rates when communication is in the country’s language.
The subject line is a crucial part of getting your target's attention and enticing them to open the message.
When it comes to writing the subject line for a campaign, think how you treat your own mailbox. Which are the messages you are most likely to open? How does your inbox scan work? (Inboxes are not read but scanned) – how much time do you apply to reading each subject line/sender name? Which messages stand out from the rest? Generally our experience of EDM has shown that the old adage “Don’t sell it, tell it” holds true for our own and our clients’ campaigns. Simply telling a recipient what the mail contains in the subject line is more likely to generate an open than the oversell technique (which can also mean the mail is treated as SPAM). Also, if the first line of text contains the same key words as the subject line this can help avoid the SPAM filter; provided of course that those words are not SPAM words themselves!

3. Timing the campaign:

Timing can make a difference, obviously a message is more likely to be read if it arrives at a time when the recipient is available, but with the increased number of messages being sent there is no one time you can guarantee a message will be read. In fact, these days there seems to be a trend towards sending at what were formally unpopular times, simply to make your message stand out from the crowd. However, Tuesdays and Thursdays still remain popular days, while Monday mornings, though more used than previously, are still avoided by many. A good time to get CEOs can be late in the day, except, of course for Fridays!

4. Getting the message read:

The next step, once the mail has been opened, is getting the mail read. Content makes all the difference in B2B communication: Information sharing, thought leadership, genuine news, educational, instructive, informative content. Good content generates interest, captivates and motivates an audience and can also feed and can be fed by all marketing media (videos, white papers, presentations, social networks, web sites, webinars, press etc.) ensuring that you cast your net wide to reach as many potential leads as possible. It may also be used sparingly to reach and nurture a very select target group. Good visuals help attract the reader’s attention, but a ratio of 60% text to 40% image is advised to prevent messages being rejected as SPAM.

So the campaign has gone out, but you didn’t get the open rate you wanted?

We advise a second email blast, a few days later, to those who didn’t open the first one, with an altered, but similar subject line. In our experience, a second email blast can increase an initial campaign’s open rate by 35% or more (depending on the country targeted).
A postal, “snail mail” campaign, though an additional cost, can also help. This not only reinforces your communication but can really enhance campaign effectiveness. We have experienced an increase of + 50% for our own email campaigns when combined with a postal mail operation.
Telemarketing: The ultimate personal touch – provided it is well done – can not only boost results but also provide a lot of supplementary information which may enhance your market understanding and bring you and your message closer to your target. It is difficult to provide statistics for telemarketing operations as they vary so much depending on the subject, the level of contacts’ positions in a company and the complexity of the operation. We work on the basis of actually talking to at least 40% of a given target in a telemarketing campaign.

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