B2B Marketing Tips for Cold Email Marketing
With 81% of small and medium sized businesses using email in their b2b marketing strategy as the primary customer acquisition and retention channel, it cannot be ignored. Before diving head first into this marketing channel, here is a checklist to consider.
1. Email List Provider
The most important element when incorporating B2B email marketing into your overall B2B marketing strategy, is a quality email list. When purchasing from an email list provider, make sure the data is authentic and verified from legitimate sources. Take into account the age of the database and number of attributes or columns in the records. Stay away from general lists and focus on lists targeted to your market. Be wary if a provider tells you the list is opt-in. The bottom line is if the subscribers did not come to your website or landing page and explicitly give you permission to email them the list is not opt-in.
2. Domain Name and Set Up
When sending a B2B marketing campaign to a cold or purchased email list, never deploy the emails from your primary corporate domain. There is a chance your recipients may mark you as spam and this could affect your email deliverability and cause your emails to bounce. A reputation hit to your primary domain could also cause your normal emails to your customers to bounce. To avoid these complications, acquire a few domains for prospecting purposes. Make sure SPF and DKIM are correctly authenticated and configured. The domain in the send from must authenticate the SMTP delivery server in your SPF and DKIM.
3. IP Warm Up
ISPs do not allow to Spam to their servers and are very wary of emails coming from new IP address. Many have daily limitations on how many emails can be delivered by a new IP address and may punish you for overspeeding. New IPs need to build a good sending reputation in order to increase your chances of landing in the inbox. The correct way to begin sending email in your B2B marketing campaign, is to start with low volumes. Some of your emails will be delivered as ISPs start building up your reputation, but you can expect some problems along the way. ISPs want to see how recipients react to your emails. They may send some to the spam folder to see if recipients are marking it not spam. This is a positive signal.
Create a warm up schedule and adjust your volume daily depending on performance. There is no magic number of emails to start sending or length of time required to fully warm up your IPs. Your sending reputation can be affected by many factors, including but not limited to, list quality, hard bounces, structure and relevance of your content. Try to use clean lists to warm up your server and respond to the complaints and unsubscribe requests on time. Monitor your campaigns daily.
4. Email Content
B2B email marketing is the highest driver of ROI for over 59% of marketers. WIth over 249 billion emails sent daily, the only way to stand out from the crowd is an attractive email. Start with eye catching email subject lines that summarize the intent of your email. Avoid spam words like best offer, action required, free etc. Make sure your text is short, easily readily and highly scannable. Try to get your point across in the first 20% of your text. Don’t add too many links or images. The bigger the image the more likely a spam filter will block you. If you are adding GIFs to your email, content keep file size and weight in mind. Use less than 10 frames, putting the most important one first. Avoid attachments and keep the overall email size to 100Kb or less.
Use custom tags to personalize, have a clear call to action and include an unsubscribe link to allow your recipients to opt out. Always follow CAN SPAM laws and follow emailing best practices at all times.
5. Email Frequency
There is no such thing as the ideal email sending frequency. Your B2B marketing campaigns to cold email lists should be informative and thoughtful with the intent of introducing yourself and your value proposition. Send frequently to your cold email lists so your email server is active and warmed up with the different ISPs. Daily is recommended or at a minimum once or twice a week. Keep your recipients active and engaged.
6. Build your Opt In List
Move recipients who are clicking through to your landing page and not unsubscribing to another email list. These are the people you want to target to opt in to receiving emails from you. Send them campaigns laying out your value proposition and the benefits of joining your community.
Important Note..
If you have been running a cold email B2B marketing campaign and you switch domains, IPs or providers, your current statistics will differ from past results. You may be using the same list of subscribers, but they have not received any communications from the new domain or IPs so as far as ISPs are concerned, you are a new sender.