Inbound Marketing Age

Editors note: This blog post was originally published in November 2011 and has since been updated for optimal relevance and accuracy.

95% of us check our email every day, sometimes up to 20 times a day. We're glued to our mobile phones, making it easy for us to have constant access to our emails. In fact, 28% of us check our work email whilst in the bathroom!

Despite whispers that email marketing dead, the reality is that it remains one of the best ways to attract and retain customers. It offers a highly efficient channel at the heart of inbound marketing for communicating with clients in a targeted, measurable and cost-effective way.

Why bother wasting precious resource on an email marketing campaign?

No one opens emails anymore. Everyone knows email is dead. 

Well, according to the stats, that’s all a fallacy.

Email is in fact, proliferating. Astonishingly.

DMA Insight shows that 95% of us check our email every day, sometimes up to 20 times.

Recently Adobe published their 2018 Consumer Email Survey based on research by Advanis. Whilst this was US-based research, we know that historically there are many similarities between the US and UK markets.

The survey contains a number of fascinating insights, including the astonishing fact that 28% of respondents check their work email whilst in the bathroom! Not sure how relevant that is to any campaign you might think of running, but it's an interesting insight nonetheless.

But wait, isn’t email marketing dead?

Email was the pinnacle of nineties marketing. Transforming mass communication when it became free and available to all, email revolutionised how we reach our customers.

Nowadays, we have access to free social media, targeted banner advertising, Google ads, pay-per-click. You get the picture.

Crafting beautiful emails full of useful content and calls to action is not enough on its own. If your emails do not get opened, you are wasting your time.

Getting the recipient to make that first click and start reading is the key to a successful B2B inbound email marketing campaign.

You might think that the subject line is the main reason people open your emails, and indeed 47% of subscribers say this is the primary reason; however, a much larger percentage – 64% – say that who it is from is the biggest factor.

What this means is that the sender address and branding are very important. Make sure that the sending address includes your web domain so that recipients can recognise it. And as I wrote in an earlier post, make it a real person – research shows that this performs better than a generic email address.

Despite all the new digital channels, social networks and message systems that have emerged over the past ten years, good old-fashioned B2B email marketing still remains one of the most effective ways of engaging with your buyers, attracting new prospects and retaining customers. As a marketing tool B2B email returns an excellent ROI – which is readily measurable – unlike many other marketing channels. It’s usage is still growing with an estimated 3 billion users worldwide by 2020.

But like so many other things, it only works if it is done well. And with increasing competition within recipient’s inboxes, it increasingly needs to be done very well.

With General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) looming, compliance is also more important than ever.

In this article we look at some essential tips to help you optimise your email marketing, and ensure you are compliant.

Creative. Challenging. Dynamic. Relentless. Exhausting...

Just some of the words you might use to describe your B2B marketing role.

And, as you know, a successful marketer is one who is willing to learn and adapt to satisfy the needs of both prospects and customers.

In 2017, we’re slap bang in the middle of a period of disruption. Skill sets that might’ve propelled you to the top ten years ago could be now obsolete. Equally, if you don’t invest and expand your knowledge, business will begin to suffer in the race against political, economical and digital advancements.

Below we outline the top three B2B marketing challenges in 2017 and how you can put a plan into action to prioritise, tackle and wipe these off the to-do list, leaving you free to sleep easy again.

Despite the hype around social media, messaging apps and other newer forms of marketing communications, email is still an effective marketing channel. Providing your prospects have signed up for it, email still has the power to engage with clients and prospects as well as any other medium.

But like any marketing channel, it’s only valid when you are doing it right. Get email marketing wrong, you run the risk of losing not only prospects, but also your existing customers. Email marketing has great potential to irritate and annoy if is unwanted or unhelpful. There are few things people loathe more than spam. And spam is not just unsolicited emails, it’s any email that wastes the recipient’s time.

Creating useful, timely content for your prospective clients and customers is essential in today’s inbound marketing landscape. Prospects are actively researching products and services and seeking information about problems and solutions. When you are composing emails for professional services there are some important principles to work to. Keep these in mind and you will create better, more effective content.

On the 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) replaces the existing Data Protection Act (DPA). New regulations under the GDPR are intended to strengthen and unify data protection while protecting individuals residing in the EU. The GDPR expects companies to understand the risks they create when handling and using data while building a culture of privacy.

The good news is, if you’re already following principles stated within the DPA, transition should be easy.

Newsletters often get a bad rap - we’ve all received boring ones that fail to offer any useful information and provide "updates" on topics about which we neither know nor care. But, believe it or not, newsletters don't have to be tedious.

In fact, email is still a powerful weapon in your inbound marketing arsenal. They can help you to nurture leads and delight customers, by providing useful information that answers their questions, solves their problems, and generally piques their interest. Regularly sending out informative and usefulcontent can strengthen the relationships you have with the people that need or are already using your product or service.

But where do you start? How do you come up with engaging newsletter content that doesn't bore the socks off your readers? If you're stuck for email newsletter ideas, here are three easy ones to get you started: