At Promoboxx, we maintain constant contact with our clients to better understand and identify their current and future needs. At the end of the day, effective communication and engagement with our clients is our number one priority- a happy client makes a happy campaign!
Amongst the many communication strategies we use, we have come to find that e-mail is one of the most important. Multiple times per week, we send out important client e-mails.
The email content includes:
As any good company should do, we are constantly evolving and learning. Through our experiences, we have discovered a few things that have helped us better understand the science of B2B e-mail marketing.
Here are five practices we have found useful in increasing open and click-through rates:
1. Subject Line: It isn’t rocket science, the subject line makes or breaks an e-mail. It is vital to include a call to action within the subject line to grab the receiver’s attention. The subject line should be no more than 55 characters long and focus on action words that create a sense of urgency. Always avoid any spam-like phrases such as “Buy Now” or “Subscribe Today.” Hubspot has put together a great list of spam keywords that you should avoid when sending e-mails.
2. From Line: We can all relate to how overwhelming e-mail can be. How often do you look at your full inbox and ignore the messages that are from people or brands that you have no relationship with? We have found that generic from lines are often mistaken for spam, regardless of the subject line. The from line should be specific to either the brand or come directly from a personal e-mail account. It is important for the receiver to be able to automatically recognize who the sender is.
3. Timing: Although every campaign is different, we have found that certain times are optimal for sending out e-mails. We typically see e-mails that are sent in between 10am and Noon on Tuesdays and Wednesdays perform the best, with a 30% or higher open rate.
4. Testing: We can’t stress enough how important it is to test e-mails before they go out. We check over how clear the content is, look for spelling errors, double check that the links are working and make sure the formatting is correct. We also continuously test different calls to action, ways to explain our initiatives and what time we send the e-mails out. Through testing different methods we are able to figure out what works best, what doesn’t work at all and everything in between.
5. Data: We use sendgrid to track all of our e-mails that are sent out, allowing us to monitor all of our communication open rates, click through rates and bounces. All of this data is vital to understanding ways we can improve our e-mail marketing strategy. So far, e-mail tracking metrics have allowed us to identify best times to send e-mails out to certain clients. This has helped us increase open rates by a huge amount.
We are continuously looking to improve our communication strategy and as we evolve and learn, we will continue to update you all on our findings and best practices. Do you have any B2B e-mail marketing tips you would like to share?
