Before embarking upon any large scale B2B email marketing initiative it’s important toremain cognizant of some best practices for using your B2B email data because poorly planned emaillead generation campaigns can not only waste your time, money, and marketing resources – they canactually cause much more serious damage in terms of your ability to engage in effective emailmarketing in the future.
To help you do all of those things well, we’ve compiled some of our top tips for best practice with email data.
Tip No.1: Have the Data Ready
Email communication rarely works when lists are assembled haphazardly the night before a big feature announcement or product launch. Instead, begin segmenting, managing, and parsing your industry contacts as well as have chosen a reliable data source at the earliest possible opportunity. This allows plenty of lead time to strategise and prepare outreach at the most advantageous time for your business and your recipients.
Tip No.2: Understand your Data
To truly make the most out of your email list you need to truly understand who you are sending to. Recipients are not likely to be receptive to misdirected and irrelevant communication. Instead, we advocate waiting until you have something of value to communicate before reaching out. And when you do, an empathetic and personal approach is always advisable.
Tip No.3: Segment your Data
If you’re not sending emails on a one-by-one basis then the least you need to do is segment your list in as granular a way as possible. For that reason you should ideally be relying upon a reliable and well-vetted data source with as many variables as possible for you to drill down into. Use this source to segment your list and identify only the most relevant recipients for your communications. And consider enriching any templates you are using with the fields that are most relevant to the outreach you plan on engaging in.
Keeping your sending volume to a reasonable minimum and segmenting your list as tightly as possible will guarantee that your list of contacts remains useful for as long as your contacts are at their jobs. Just make sure that the data source underlying the spreadsheet is reliable built and maintained to ensure that results are maintained over time.
As a side benefit of this more targeted outreach: your campaigns will also perform better too. Research has proven that improving the segmentation of your email marketing campaign yields better open and click through rates along with better conversion and more revenue generated per lead.
Tip No.4: Avoid Impaired Deliverability
If you have been trying to cast your email marketing net a little too wide then you might find yourself on the wrong side of spam filters very quickly. Spam filters are actually an intricate and interwoven network of technologies operated by MTAs and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Their goal is simply to prevent their customers from receiving spam.
Unfortunately, once a relatively high proportion of your recipients report that your email communication was spam (rightly or not) your ability to reach other inboxes is greatly impaired. Unfortunately this effect can also be long lasting and impair future campaigns.
Many proponents of bulk cold email marketing recommend rotating domains in an attempt to stay one step ahead of these filters. Our advice is not to attempt to outsmart these important technologies because hitting irrelevant contacts in an email blitz is not likely to reflect well upon our business or the company you represent. Instead, email judiciously, to relevant and verified contacts only, from day one. Doing so will give your email and sending domain the best possible chance of retaining high deliverability.
Tip No.5: Ensure you have an Opt Out on all Emails
In our experience nothing annoys recipients more than being added to a mailing list without any form of opt in and then being sent repeated communications that are of no relevance or interest. Legislation governing email marketing, including GDPR, requires that unsolicited messages have either an unsubscribe button or carry explanatory text letting users know what they can do to ensure that they won’t hear from you again. Make sure that your subscriber list never feels coerced into receiving your communications or has to resort to taking actions such as blocking your domain.
Tip No.6: Don't Send Higher Volumes
Higher volumes are more likely to draw negative attention to your account and trigger anti-spam filters. So if you’re sending GDPR-compliant unsolicited email then it’s far more sensible approach to instead compile a smaller list of well-qualified leads.
Many email programs will set a maximum bounce rate that your emails must stay under in order to be allowed to continue using the service. Exceeding this limit might put you in violation of your provider’s Terms of Service (TOS).
If this happens, you might find that your account is suspended summarily and switching providers can be a painstaking endeavour that no one wants!
Two factors are likely to drive up the percentage of your emails that are reported as spam: those sent to inappropriate contacts and those sent to email addresses that do not exist (called “bounces” or failed deliveries).
And don’t forget about your professional reputation and unsubscribe rate. As one goes down, the other could go up. It’s better (for many reasons) to take a tightly focused and authentic approach.
Concluding Thoughts
Aim High, Start Small
Maintaining an effective email database is a long game and the “spray and pray” style mass email campaigns you’ve probably received and sighed at in frustration almost never yield desirable results for senders.
In order to obtain the best results you should make sure that your data source is as high quality as possible. This will ensure that your bounce rate is kept to a minimum and that your communications are perceived as relevant every time. And over the long term, this will translate to better deliverability and higher ROI.
Talk to us at i-4business to find out how we can help you get the best email data necessary for your business.
Call us on 01252 367400 or email support@i4b.com
