B2B Email: Three effective tactics to increase relevance and improve results

W. Jeffrey Rice

Adam T. Sutton

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Introductions

W. Jeffrey Rice Senior Research Analyst, MarketingSherpa Email: jeffrey.rice@MECLABS.com Twitter: @WJeffreyR

Adam T. Sutton Senior Reporter, MarketingSherpa Email: adam.sutton@MECLABS.com Twitter: @AdamTSutton

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Annual research-based process leads to improving email marketing performance

• Benchmark Report - Find what works for

thousands of email marketers

• Handbook - Identify best practices and

formulate a methodology

• Knowledge transfer - Teach email marketers how

to apply best practices

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Top 5 priorities for 2012

“Building relevant, interesting, insightful content. People are inundated with marketing messages nowadays; we are looking to cut through the noise and provide something of value to people.”

– Survey participant

38%

39%

41%

64%

72%

Segmenting emaildatabase

Achieving or increasingmeasurable ROI

Increasing emailengagement metrics

Growing and retainingsubscribers

Delivering highlyrelevant content

Business channel (B2B)

Source: ©2011 MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey Methodology: Fielded July 2011, N=2,735

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There is work to do

1 2 3

Three key principles stand out

Three tactics for increasing relevance

1. IDENTIFY the right audience through

segmentation

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1: IDENTIFY – Case study background

• The company: Infusionsoft • The product: Marketing software

• The channel: Email • The campaign objective: Extract value from older leads

• The sales background: Average lead took 30 days to become sales-ready;

unfortunately every lead was not average

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• Stage A: Nurture fresh leads first, maintain an ongoing program

• Stage B: Identify the segment - Leads 30-days or older

1: IDENTIFY – Case study execution

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• Stage C: Design long-term “tips” email series

• Stage D: Avoid overwhelming audience

1: IDENTIFY – Case study execution

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With a 30-day average sales cycle:

• 37% of customers now come from

leads generated more than three months ago

• 20% of customers now come from leads generated more than one year ago

1: IDENTIFY – Case study results

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• Long-term nurture emails avg. example: o Open rate: 14.1% o CTR: 0.5%

• Newsletter o Open rate: 11.4% o CTR: 2.2%

• Webinar invitations

o Open rate: 45% o CTR: 19%

"The webinars are the best conversion points for us throughout the long-term series. But, the long-term series allows us, I believe, to be able to send out those webinar invitations and get good response.”

- Tyler Garns, Director, Marketing,

Infusionsoft

1: IDENTIFY – Case study results

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1: IDENTIFY – Key principles

Learning about new

features

Look forward to tips that help me do my job

better

Evaluate purchasing

options

Enjoy reading what

the CEO thinks I recently

changed jobs

1. A database is not one audience

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2. Segmentation is primarily driven by four types of data

Let’s take a quick look at each type of data and how it might help with

segmentation.

1: IDENTIFY – Key principles

• Endemic: - Data unique to a particular record - e.g. job title, company name, vertical industry

• Transaction: - Data captured during any transaction an opt-in has with your brand - e.g. financial, opt-in landing page, subscriber’s IP address

• Behavioral: - Data captured during any interaction with subscriber - e.g. website clicks, email clickthroughs, calls to technical service

• Computed: - Data is the outcome when one or more variables are used to create a third

variable - e.g. distance to subscriber’s address from your event

1: IDENTIFY – Four types of data

Three Tactics for Increasing Relevance

1. IDENTIFY the right audience through

segmentation

2. HELP the audience with targeted content

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• Targeting content to each funnel stage is a top tactic

• Most tactics require additional content

10%

10%

23%

27%

28%

29%

33%

36%

36%

Use animated gifs or video

Include surveys, trivia or games

Allow subscribers to specify email preferences

Segment email campaigns based on behavior

Dynamically personalize email content

Segment email campaigns based on sales cycle

Use loyalty/reward programs

Produce content for each funnel stage

Automatically send email based on triggers

Source: ©2011 MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey Methodology: Fielded July 2011, N=2,735

2: HELP – How do marketers obtain relevance?

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31% of B2B email marketers find the “inability to manufacture relevant content on a consistent and predictable basis” to be a top-five barrier to success

2: HELP – But, who is going to create content?

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• The company: Paymetric • The product: Payment card processing and tokenization solution

• The channel: Email • The campaign objective: Continue generating and nurturing leads after staff

cuts

• The sales and marketing background: Staff cut from six to two people, yet nurturing and promotional emails needed to continue

2: HELP – Case study background

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Make use of everything: • Repurpose content

• Use templates

• Create repeatable

marketing plans

2: HELP – Case study execution

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Automate what you can: • Schedule and

automate emails: o Promotions

o Reminders

o Follow-up

• Automate lead

scoring and hand-off

2: HELP – Case study execution

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• Launched 98 campaigns in

one year with two-person staff

• Nearly doubled campaigns sent with six-person staff

• 200% to 500% increase in marketing department-generated leads in the pipeline

2: HELP – Case study results

2: HELP – 3 ways to create content they will crave

• Repurpose – Whitepapers

– Blogs

– Tech data sheets

• User-generated – Testimonials

– Product reviews

• Original – How can I help?

– “Rather than focus on being interesting, be interested”

- Brian Carroll

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Storytelling

Seek to provide valuable information within the context of your brand and products

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Exercise: The art of repurposing content

• Note existing content

• List department

• Select funnel placement

Three Tactics for Increasing Relevance

1. IDENTIFY the right audience through

segmentation

2. HELP the audience with targeted content

3. SCHEDULE emails in triggered or automated series

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3: SCHEDULE – Case study background

• The company: Citrix

• The product: Enterprise software and services

• The channel: Email

• The campaign objective: Auto-nurture new leads with triggered nurturing emails

• The marketing and sales background: Segment incoming leads and send evergreen content

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3: SCHEDULE – Case study execution

• Stage A: Segment incoming leads by product and persona

• Stage B: Schedule pre-programmed offers for targeted content

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3: SCHEDULE – Case study execution

• Stage C: Measure and update the offers each quarter

• Stage D: Send weekly offers to all other leads

• Stage E: Only collect detailed info when you need it

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3: SCHEDULE Case study results

Automated nurturing emails: • 1.70% CTR • 1.57% response rate

Manual house-file emails: • 0.65% CTR • 0.62% response rate

3: SCHEDULE – Key principles

1. The best time to send is now

2. One of the most effective ways to respond “now” is through triggered drip-nurture emails

3: SCHEDULE – What are drip-nurture emails?

• Not a newsletter - Series of emails to help nurture leads

• Relevant timing

- Sent in response to an action (whitepaper download) or event

• Relevant content

- Often educate a prospect on a topic/product of interest

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3: SCHEDULE – What events trigger them?

7%

11%

13%

15%

18%

18%

20%

24%

35%

51%

55%

Shopping cart abandonment

Win back/ reengagement

Triggered based on website behavior

Activation (e.g. how to)

Upsell (e.g. product recommendations)

Post purchase (e.g. product review)

Date triggered (e.g. renewals, reorder)

Event countdown

Transactional (e.g. bills, receipts)

Welcome

Thank you

Business channel (B2B)

Source: ©2011 MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey Methodology: Fielded July 2011, N=2,735

Go beyond drip campaigns

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Tools/ Resources

• FREE email marketing newsletter http://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters.html

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Summary

1. They IDENTIFY the right audience

through segmentation

2. They HELP the audience with

targeted content

3. They SCHEDULE emails in

triggered or automated series

Our research indicates B2B marketers achieve the highest email relevance with three factors:

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Exercise: Triggered email inventory worksheet

• Review communication touch points

• Determine the sending department

• Where is the data held?

• Understand the event that triggers communication

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Thank you!

W. Jeffrey Rice Senior Research Analyst, MarketingSherpa Email: jeffrey.rice@MECLABS.com Twitter: @WJeffreyR

Adam T. Sutton Senior Reporter, MarketingSherpa Email: adam.sutton@MECLABS.com Twitter: @AdamTSutton

Lunch break