The Anything but Basic | Cognism
With this guide you’ll discover ✔️The benefits of email marketing ✔️How to write emails that convert and don’t land up in spam folders ✔️Pro tips for planning and launching email campaigns ✔️The metrics you should be tracking for your email marketing campaigns ✔️Email marketing tools your team will love
The Anything but Basic Guide to Email Marketing
Content 04 / Introduction: What is email marketing? 05 / What are the benefits of email marketing? 06 / The basics of email marketing: easy first steps 10 / Copywriting: crafting emails and sequences that convert 18 / How to plan and launch email campaigns The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 2
28 / Email marketing tools: recommendations for your team 30 / How to optimise campaigns and improve deliverability 36 / Email marketing metrics: what should you track? 40 / Email marketing do’s and don’ts: a checklist 42 / Email marketing: closing comments 43 / Better data = better email marketing The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 3
Introduction: What is email marketing? What’s the first thing you do when you get into the office? You check your emails, of course! Every day, hundreds of billions of emails are sent and received. Of those, a large number will be marketing emails, aimed at making prospects and customers aware of products, services and brands. That’s what email marketing is - marketing directly into your prospects’ inboxes. It’s a small piece of your company’s wider digital marketing strategy, but it’s not to be underestimated: Email marketing booked 51.9% of sales meetings and converted 11.2% of new customers in 2020. But, many inboxes are currently flooded with spam. The trick is to get around that and convince your prospect that you’re the best solution to their problems. You need to think smart. And, this guide is going to help you do just that! The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 4
What are the benefits of email marketing? Why email marketing? Inexpensive Targeted Messaging Better Reach Email marketing Segmented email Connect with anyone, costs a fraction lists mean better anywhere - the of mainstream personalisation and opportunities are marketing channels. more conversions. endless. Ease of Use An Engaged Drive Revenue Audience Easy to use. Easy to An easy way to share Email generates measure. Easy to hit your value drivers billions of revenue reply and easy to as you nurture your every year. share. leads. As a marketing strategy, email marketing is easy to use. It’s an effective way for marketers to communicate with prospects on a global scale. And, with a 4,200% average return on investment, it’s not something to ignore. After all, who can say no to $42 for every $1 spent! But where to start? Let’s take a look. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 5
The basics of email marketing: easy first steps Before you start an email marketing campaign you need to get a few things straight. Ask yourself: 1. If you have multiple products or services, which one are you selling? 2. Who are you selling it to? 3. What’s your end goal? Once you know this, you can start with: Step #1: Create email lists Take the info you’ve gathered and create lists of all your prospects who you want to target for each product or service. We’re big believers in segmenting your lists at Cognism. Not only are you likely to see an increase in open, click, read and response rates, but: It allows you to send more relevant content. It ensures you don’t send too many emails (ruining your domain reputation). It progresses your prospects down the funnel. It helps you achieve more response rates, leading to increased revenue. The ACall me on tNYTHING BUT Bhe office sAwitSIC gchbouide tard... o emsaid no one eail marketingver! / / 66
Segmenting your lists makes it easier to run campaigns for each target audience. It also ensures your emails won’t get marked as spam. Plus, you’ll gain a better understanding of who you’re targeting. This allows for a more personalised experience; you won’t be sending every single one of your prospects emails they don’t want. Step #2: Plan your campaign For each campaign, map out ideas for your cadences by deciding on: How many sequences will you include in each: one, three or five? What are the major pain points your customers experience and how will your solution solve them? How will you spread that information across each sequence? Do you have any valuable content to share that relates to what you’re selling? Remember, prospects don’t want to be sold to. They want value. And more often than not, if you offer value in an email you’re going to get a happy response. We’re living in a digital age where people are constantly being asked if they want to sign up, subscribe and provide their credit card details. They can see sales emails coming from a mile away. What makes yours different? Value. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 7
Offer them an ungated piece of content, a link to a blog you think they’d enjoy, coupons, invites to free courses and webinars, access to gated content or a free trial of your product. This will help build better relationships with your prospects and, in the long haul, do wonders for your brand. But be careful. Too much value can be a bad thing. “I see people making the mistake of making it ALL about value to their email subscribers. Just like any good relationship, it doesn’t work if it’s not working for EVERYONE. Dumping valuable content onto your audience doesn’t help anyone if you don’t show them how to take action with it. That action should be directly tied to your offers.” Emily McGuire, Founder and Chief Email Marketer, Flourish & Grit Step #3: Automate your email marketing The next step is investing in the right tools for the job. This means taking advantage of one of the many fantastic email marketing tools available today. Not only can they help streamline your workflow, but they give you the ability to automate a large part of the email marketing process – freeing up time for you to focus on other areas of your business. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 8
Email marketing automation allows you to send triggered/timed emails to your prospects on a schedule, or when they’ve followed certain steps to trigger the next email. The best part? This kind of marketing intelligence does all the hard work for you! You don’t have to sit there clicking send all day long. And you don’t have to manually enter a list of recipients each time you want to reach your Total Addressable Market! Automating your email marketing process will save time and cut costs for your company. What’s more, you can engage with your audience more often, but more importantly, at the right times. For example: creating an email sequence to trigger when a user leaves an abandoned cart has boosted conversion rates by up to 50%. With this said, let’s get on to the good stuff: crafting your emails! The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 9
Copywriting: crafting emails and sequences that convert Email sequences are an integral part of your data-driven marketing arsenal. You can use them to: Educate your target audience on the benefits of your product. Make your prospects feel good about and engage with your brand. Persuade them to take action. But you won’t get any results unless you perfect your copy. If your sequences are poorly written, boring or fail to communicate the necessary information, your prospects won’t be interested in what you’re selling. Or worse… They’ll mark you as spam. Here’s a list of our top tips for crafting the ultimate marketing email: 1 - Keep it short Keeping your emails between 50 and 125 words can increase your response rates by 50%! The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 10
Short emails work best because your prospects can skim and see what you have to say without needing to scroll down. This helps them to remember your words and engage with you when they have a spare moment. We know it’s tough, but it’s worth it! Plus, condensing what you have to say ensures that every line of copy serves a purpose. So keep things brief! Include all the juicy/important info at the very start of your email and make sure you have a strong hook to reel the reader in. 2 - Check your tone No one wants to read something that makes them feel bad, so it’s best to keep your marketing emails positive, upbeat and friendly - it can increase your response rate by up to 15%! But whatever you do, don’t make your emails boring. In marketing, we tend to go with the safest option so as not to upset anyone instead of having a little fun. An email that makes a prospect laugh can help to mitigate any negative sentiment when you land in an inbox unannounced. It also helps build your brand identity. So if your email annoys some people, but makes others laugh, it’s engaging. And engaging is always better than boring. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 11
Our rules for tone and humour are: Keep the copy short, punchy and to the point. Use conversational language - write like people talk! Avoid too many colours, GIFs and images - they can be overwhelming for the reader. Adopt a theme for your email and build your copy around it. Emphasise the value of your product or promotion. 3 - Make it personal Your buyers are going to respond best to emails that come across as if they’ve been written just for them. Start by choosing a conversational tone and make the email ALL about them. To do this, stick to words and phrases like you, your team, your business etc., rather than I, we, our, us. Then, use merge fields. Don’t overdo it though! A prospect who sees an email stuffed with their name and company name is likely to be turned off. Two to three personalised elements per email is usually enough. And, if you’re thinking about where your prospect is in their buying journey, the rest will come naturally. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 12
4 - Add value “Nobody wants to hear someone talk about themselves 100% of the time. That’s how basic relationships work. If you think about your audience as people you want to build relationships with, then it’s easy to come up with valuable content.” Emily McGuire, Founder and Chief Email Marketer, Flourish & Grit Thousands of marketing emails are sent to prospects on a daily basis. You have to stand out. You don’t want to be seen as just popping into their inbox and asking them to buy something. So, if all your emails are sales-focused, there’s a possibility your audience will become unresponsive. Provide them with value-add emails regularly, using an 80/20 split between value and sales emails. Remember to offer them ungated content, a case study where you’ve helped a company in a similar situation solve their challenges, a link to an interesting blog, coupons, an invite to a webinar or a freebie. By offering them value, you’re building a trustworthy relationship with your prospect which can lead to referrals and brand awareness, not to mention a lifelong customer. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 13
5 - Include a CTA Remember back when we discussed the basics of email marketing? We mentioned establishing your goals for each campaign. Your call to action will be your little push to get your prospect to move towards fulfilling those goals. This may seem like a no-brainer, but many businesses taking their first steps into email marketing fail to realise how effective a proper call-to- action can be. So don’t be afraid to make it stand out. And, according to HubSpot, personalised CTAs convert 202% better than generic versions. So have a little fun with your CTA, but make sure the action you want your prospect to take is clear. “Keep it simple and be clear about what it is they’re going to do after they click. Tell people what the next step is going to be for them. Whether or not that is, Watch, View, Read, Sign Up or Get Going. And, if you have the time and talent to develop creative calls to action, then go for it!” Emily McGuire, Founder and Chief Email Marketer, Flourish & Grit Here are a couple of examples: 1. Does it make sense to chat about (your value add)? 2. Have you tried a solution like (your solution) before? 3. Could (your solution) help your team achieve (outcome) faster? The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 14
Cognism’s top 3 rules for CTAs: If you are offering If your offer is Make your CTA something for free time-sensitive, tell very clear. Don’t (e.g. trial, scoping), them. Create some have more than mention it in your urgency! one CTA in an CTA. email. 6 - Well thought out subject lines You’re probably wondering why we left the subject line till last. Truth is, we write our subject lines last. Why? If you wait until you’ve written your email, you’ll get a better idea of the email’s tone and theme. Then, you can adapt your subject line to match them. Not only this, but you might have written something clever or insightful that would make a great subject line. Your subject line is one of the most important factors when it comes to your email. After all, 47% of emails are opened because of the subject line. And 69% are marked as spam just because of it! So it’s vital to think long and hard about what you use for yours. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 15
It could be the reason your email is opened, read, marked as spam or immediately ignored. For instance, if it’s too long, comes across as spammy or is just plain old boring, your open rates are going to decrease. When it comes to B2B marketing, your subject lines need to stay under 60 characters. This ensures that your message isn’t cut off. It also creates more intrigue for your prospect. In fact - prospects are 47% more likely to open an email with a short subject line. Our advice is to A/B test some short creative subject lines against some ambiguous one-word subject lines. Here are a few examples: A: [Company Name] ‘s outbound is a piece of cake? B: Introducing Subject line A breaks the 60 character rule. In this case, it’s ok to break the rules because cake will be cut off in your prospects’ inboxes. So all they’ll see is: “Your company’s outbound is a piece of...” Leading them to open the email to discover who would have the audacity to say such a thing... only to find out its cake! A: Webinar seats limited - sign up now B: Connecting While there’s nothing too interesting about subject line A, it does tell the recipient that they’ll miss out if they don’t open the email and sign up. Putting a deadline on things creates urgency and encourages your prospect to take action. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 16
Another top tip: try including words that imply time is of the essence, e.g.: urgent, breaking, important, alert etc. A: Don’t open this email B: Following up Creating intrigue is a sure-fire way to increase your open rates and get your prospect reading. Subject line A creates an aura of mystery; your reader will be curious as to why they shouldn’t open the email. Then, they’ll do just that! Another subject line to take inspiration from is: A: Cognism sent you a friend request Not only does it create intrigue, but it resulted in a 32% open rate for us. Sometimes creating familiarity is all you need to get someone to open your email. Subject line A catches you off guard because it’s not an email from Facebook, but the subject line convinces you that it could be. Cognism Top Tip: Struggling to craft a compelling email? Think about the best email you ever received. What made it stick in your mind and why did you enjoy it? Now take inspiration from that and roll with it! Save your favourite external marketing emails in a separate folder in your inbox. Then, return to them whenever you’re at a loss for words. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 17
How to plan and launch email campaigns Now that you know what to write, you need to start planning your campaigns. Go back to your segmented lists and ask yourself: The anything but basic guide to email marketing | 11 What does each list of prospects need from me? Once you know what you need to say, you can plan your campaign. There How to plan and launch email campaigns are quite a few email types you can use. Now that you know what to write, you need to start planning your campaigns. Go back to your segmented lists and ask yourself: Starting with: What does each list of prospects need from me? nce you know what you need to say, you can plan your campaign. There are uite a few email types you can use. tarting with: Introductory emails Introductory emails When you’re connecting with a customer for the first time, you’e only got one shot to make an impression. Two sentences are all it takes to piue your prospect’s interest and get them to continue reading. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 18 This kind of makes your introductory email the most important marketing mail you’ll eer write. €ou’re going to hae to find a way to: • ƒntroduce yourself and e„plain why you’re reaching out. • …dd alue in a way that comes across as both creatie and informatie without being too focused on selling. Tough, but doable as you can see from the e„ample aboe. †emember to refer to your prospect’s first name and company name. ‡ake sure to include a clear ˆT…. ‰or added oomph, try to keep your introductory email a bit shorter. Š‹ words is a benchmark to hit for the best clickŒthrough rates. www.cognism.com |
When you’re connecting with a customer for the first time, you’ve only got one shot to make an impression. Two sentences are all it takes to pique your prospect’s interest and get them to continue reading. This kind of makes your introductory email the most important B2B marketing mail you’ll ever write. You’re going to have to find a way to: Introduce yourself and explain why you’re reaching out. Add value in a way that comes across as both creative and informative without being too focused on selling. Tough, but doable as you can see from the example above. Remember to refer to your prospect’s first name and company name. Make sure to include a clear CTA. For added oomph, try to keep your introductory email a bit shorter. 60 words is a benchmark to hit for the best click-through rates. “Make your automated emails look as personal as possible. The more automated it looks, the less people care.” Oscar Frost, SEO and Content Executive, Cognism The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 19
The anything but basic guide to email marketing | 12 “Make your automated emails look as personal as possible. The more automated it looks, the less people care.” - Oscar Frost, SO and ontent ecutie Follow up emails Follow up emails aent heard back rom your prospect a ter your introductory email Theres a magic trick to re-engage €ith them‚ The ollo€-up emailƒ The ollo€-up email helps „og their memory and lets them kno€ a bit more about ho€ you can sole their biggest Haven’t heard back from your prospect after your introductory email? challenges. …t ognism, €ee ound that a sub„ect line that doubles as a T… or is short and concise gets great open rates There’s a magic trick to re-engage with them: €hen ollo€ing up. ere are three eamples‚ • Follo€ing up The follow-up email! • Scheduling our call • Meeting re‡uest The follow-up email helps jog their memory and lets them know a bit more about how you can solve their biggest challenges. “ˆroide alue and lead €ith a prospect centric message. ‰o one €ants to read a sales pitch, keep it ocused on pain points and proide alue. Mentioning pain points and then going into a sales pitch also isnt enough.” At Cognism, we’ve found that a subject line that doubles as a CTA or is - Šiam ‹artholome€, Œlobal ead o Žemand Œeneration short and concise gets great open rates when following up. Here are three examples: Following up Scheduling our call www.cognism.com | Meeting request The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 20
“Provide value and lead with a prospect centric message. No one wants to read a sales pitch, keep it focused on pain points and provide value. Mentioning pain points and then going into a sales pitch also isn’t enough.” Liam Bartholomew, Global Head of Demand Generation, Cognism The anything but basic guide to email marketing | 13 Freebie emails Freebie emails Free advice, eBooks and more...What’s not to love? When a prospect opens an outbound email to discover a freebie that gives them value, they’re more likely to remember you and engage in the future. When a prospect donloads a freebie from your site? ven better Free advice, eBooks and more... t opens up the chance to engage them, rather than the other ay around. Those leads can then be entered straight into the funnel. What’s not to love? This normally starts ith drip email marketing hich e’ll get into further don, but to summarise, it’s here your prospect needs more time to get to kno you and your product before being sent over to sales. ou’ll need to keep them engaged. o you’ll send them emails offering something of value such as a free guide, so hen the time comes to make the sale, it’s as easy as pie. “We like to use ‚ognism’s on story as a successful tech company to relate to prospects. By The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 21 providing information e kno they ill find useful e build rapport ith the prospect, so hen they are called by sales they already kno ho e are and all about our product.” … †iam Bartholome, ‡lobal ˆead of ‰emand ‡eneration www.cognism.com |
When a prospect opens an outbound email to discover a freebie that gives them value, they’re more likely to remember you and engage in the future. When a prospect downloads a freebie from your site? Even better! It opens up the chance to engage them, rather than the other way around. Those leads can then be entered straight into the funnel. This normally starts with drip email marketing (which we’ll get into further down), but to summarise, it’s where your prospect needs more time to get to know you and your product before being sent over to sales. You’ll need to keep them engaged. So you’ll send them emails offering something of value such as a free guide, so when the time comes to make the sale, it’s as easy as pie. “We like to use Cognism’s own story as a successful tech company to relate to prospects. By providing information we know they will find useful we build rapport with the prospect, so when they are called by sales they already know who we are and all about our product.” Liam Bartholomew, Global Head of Demand Generation, Cognism The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 22
Break up emails The anything but basic guide to email marketing | 14 Break up emails Also known as closed lost ops, the breakup email is something we’re sure we’ve all experienced! If you haven’t received a response to your cadence, don’t give up entirely ou can give it one more shot with a Also known as closed lost ops, the breakup email is something we’re sure short email letting them know you’re done trying to connect we’ve all experienced! Try to keep it short and humorous at this stage, all you’re looking for is a reaction of some kind And, if you ask them to do something simple like give you a follow on social media, you’re creating another If you haven’t received a response to your cadence, don’t give up entirely. opportunity for engagement in the future You can give it one more shot with a short email letting them know you’re done trying to connect. Rekindle nurture emails Try to keep it short and humorous; at this stage, all you’re looking for is a reaction of some kind. And, if you ask them to do something simple like give you a follow on social media, you’re creating another opportunity for engagement in the future. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 23 www.cognism.com |
The anything but basic guide to email marketing | 14 Break up emails Also known as closed lost ops, the breakup email is something we’re sure we’ve all experienced! If you haven’t received a response to your cadence, don’t give up entirely ou can give it one more shot with a short email letting them know you’re done trying to connect Try to keep it short and humorous at this stage, all you’re looking for is a reaction of some kind Rekindle nurture emails And, if you ask them to do something simple like give you a follow on social media, you’re creating another opportunity for engagement in the future Rekindle nurture emails www.cognism.com | What about those leads that seemed so promising but never worked out? This is where the rekindle nurture comes in. You can convert 45% of your lost leads with a simple email offering a discount or a special gift to rekindle the relationship. The goal is to get them thinking about working with you again. So keep your email short and sweet. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 24
“Rekindle nurtures are great to fix a ‘leaky bucket’ of leads. You’re reducing the barrier to entry by getting people back on board with something more enticing than a free demo. For example, at Cognism we offer 25 free leads.” Liam Bartholomew, Global Head of Demand Generation, Cognism Drip campaigns A drip email campaign is a great way to build stronger relationships with leads. It normally consists of a couple sequences that offer your prospects some value without being too pushy and trying to get them to book a demo. Your purpose is to warm the lead up for your sales team to take over; the best way to do that is to provide a gentle reminder that you’re there and can help them. But, that doesn’t mean you should send them just anything and call it value! A successful drip email campaign should be mutually beneficial. The lead will consider you a valuable contact if you’re sending useful content. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 25
“Different people prefer to interact in different ways. Make sure you’re sending a mix of video content, case studies, decks and more to ensure you’re connecting with each lead in their preferred way!” James Sutton, Campaign Marketing Executive, Cognism A drip campaign can consist of any of the above-mentioned emails in a cadence. We like to use drip campaigns to engage with leads who’ve already downloaded our gated content. The advantage here is that you already know what content they’re interested in, so you can provide more of the same. By regularly providing helpful content, you’ll demonstrate the value of your company and build a positive relationship with the lead. “One of the many great things about drip email campaigns is that you have the ability to change them in an instant. If something isn’t working, change it! If something is working well, use it as inspiration for your other campaigns.” James Sutton, Campaign Marketing Executive, Cognism The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 26
Once you’ve chosen what kind of campaign you want to create, planned and launched it, it’s time to A/B test: Always A/B test By A/B testing your emails, you can quickly see what works for your prospects and what doesn’t. This will help you improve conversions in the long run. Test the following: Calls to action. Subject lines. Layouts. Images. Links. Offers. If you find that not many people are opening your emails, start with your subject line. You can test the largest portion of your segmented list with names cho- sen at random. Monitor the results and metrics such as open rates and clicks. After a while, you’ll have a better understanding of what works for your audience and what doesn’t. Plus it’s a great tactic for new campaigns - it gives you the opportunity to test different approaches before spending your entire budget on some- thing that might not give you the results you’re after. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 27
Bring it all together The success of an email campaign is a combination of everything: The sequence. The subject lines. The target audience. Their position in the buyers’ cycle. There are many moving parts to a successful email sequence. It takes time to get it right. Testing and tracking results is your route to success here. Email marketing tools: recommendations for your team At Cognism, we’re no strangers to awesome tech. The right tools can help optimise and automate your campaigns. They also free up your team’s time to spend on more vital or creative tasks. Here are a few tools our demand gen team highly recommends: The AThe ANYTNYTHING BUT BHING BUT BAASIC gSIC guide tuide to emo email mail markarkeetingting / / 2828
Hubspot’s email hosting tools let you Eloqua is another B2B automation segment, send and personalise emails solution that lets you manage cross- with a simple drag-and-drop editor. channel B2B marketing campaigns. They offer campaign design, advanced lead scoring, real-time firmographic data, and integrated sales tools. Pardot is a marketing automation tool that makes it easier for you to plan, build, schedule and send emails. You can also analyse results and a/b test your Marketo helps you create email campaigns for future success. campaigns. They have a fantastic visual editor and a fully responsive collection of templates to help make your emails look good on any device. What’s more, they offer a/b testing, predictive content, triggered emails, segmentation and real- time updates. SendGrid is an easy to use cloud-based solution that helps you design, send and measure multiple campaigns. They also provide real-time customisable analytics. Adestra is also a cloud-based email marketing solution that helps you manage your campaigns. You can build emails using any of their templates as MailChimp is a flexible email marketing well as automate, report, test and target tool that’s free to use to some extent. for better performance. They’re known for their ease of use and customisable campaigns. The AThe ANYTNYTHING BUT BHING BUT BAASIC gSIC guide tuide to emo email mail markarkeetingting / / 2929
How to optimise campaigns and improve deliverability Once you’ve built and started testing your campaigns, you might notice that they need a bit of tweaking. But it’s not just your emails that need to be optimised. Your email domain reputation could be the cause of some of your problems. “Email domain reputation is the overall health of your domain as interpreted by the different email servers/mailbox providers. It’s basically a measurement of your email sending practices and how closely you follow standards set by these providers.” Olivia Carden, Technical Support & Implementation Team Lead, Cognism After all, 77% of most email deliverability issues are a result of a bad domain reputation. Why? Your domain might still be too new to send mass emails. Like your The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 30
own reputation, it takes time to build up, so all new email domains are immediately considered suspicious for the first 5 days. Or it could be that your emails have been marked as spam one too many times. “The top email servers (Gmail, Outlook, Zoho) use spam detectors to keep senders and recipients safe from phishing and malicious behaviour. So as a sender, you need to do the best you can to avoid this and make sure your content is not going to be flagged incorrectly.” Marianne Dupuy, Head of Support, Cognism Your email service provider keeps track of how you’re using your domain. Then their algorithm rates it on a scale of 0 to 100. To ensure trust, they’ll check your score and scan your messages. The better your score, the less likely your email will end up rejected or in spam. This means your domain reputation isn’t just one constant - there are thousands of reputations unique to the specific scoring processes of each receiver. Factors considered for your score include: The amount of times your email is marked as spam. How often it’s read. How often it’s deleted without being read. Open rates. Click-through rates. The number of times you get a response. How often it’s forwarded. All the times your emails are marked as “Not Spam”. Hard bounces. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 31
The anything but basic guide to email marketing | 19 Factors considered for your score include: • The amount of times your email is marked as spam. • How often it’s read. • How often it’s deleted without being read. • Open rates. • lickthrough rates. • The number of times you get a response. • How often it’s forwarded. The good news is you can check your score! • ll the times your emails are marked as “ot pam . It’s incredibly difficult, as the algorithms used to determine them are top secret. • Hard bounces. The good news is you can check your score Makes sense doesn’t it? €t’s incredibly difficultƒ as the algorithms used to determine them are top secret. This way scammers and other nefarious senders can’t use the data to „akes sense doesn’t it… their advantage. This way scammers and other nefarious senders can’t use the data to their ad†antage. There are a number of tools you can try to gauge an idea of your domain’s reputation, but keep in mind - if you can’t find too much information on There are a number of tools you can try to gauge an idea of your domain’s reputationƒ but keep in mind if you your domain, it’s likely good news for your score! can’t find too much information on your domainƒ it’s likely good news for your score These are the tools to look at: These are the tools to look at: REPUTATION They‡†e built an outstanding reputation for checking domain reputations. AUTHORITY They’ve built an outstanding reputation If you want a detailed report you’ll need for checking domain reputations. to sign up, but you can see your domain €f you want a detailed report you’ll need to sign upƒ but you can see your domain rating rating without an account. without an account. isco ser†iceƒ this tool can tell you if your ranking is goodƒ neutral or poor as well as if A Cisco service, this tool can tell you if you ha†e a fa†ourable or unfa†ourable ranking. your ranking is good, neutral or poor Used to check Google domains, giving as well as if you have a favourable or you a detailed look at everything from unfavourable ranking. your spam rate and domain and IP ˆlo‰ua is another Š‹Š automation solution that lets you manage crosschannel Š‹Š reputation to delivery errors and your marketing campaigns. They offer campaign designƒ ad†anced lead scoringƒ realtime reputation levels. firmographic dataƒ and integrated sales tools. Œsed to check Žoogle domainsƒ gi†ing you a detailed look at e†erything from your spam Regularly updated, this is a very simple rate and domain and €‘ reputation to deli†ery errors and your reputation le†els. tool that tells you if you’re blacklisted or not as well as what category your domain falls into at present. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 32 www.cognism.com |
8 tips for improving your email domain rep Once you’ve discovered you have a bad email domain reputation, pause all your outgoing email campaigns and start investigating. If you can discover why you can start the long journey to fixing it. Here are eight tips to help: 1 - Send emails to trusted sources Start off by sending a few emails to trusted sources. Ask them to reply to your mail or mark it as not spam. Continue doing this until your reputation goes back to normal. 2 - Clean your lists Has someone asked to unsubscribe? By law, you have to unsubscribe them. Then remove anyone who doesn’t respond to your emails and anyone with a soft or hard bounce. 3 - Check your domain Make sure the domain authentication is set up correctly. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is the most important as this confirms you are who you say you are. DKIM and DMARC are also important but require some time and effort and a knowledgeable team to set up. 4 - Start small Don’t send out massive amounts of emails all at once. Start small and slowly increase the volume over time - especially if you have a new domain. New domains are already fishy, so start even smaller! The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 33
5 - Target interested buyers Mass emailing prospects who don’t fit your TAM isn’t going to get you anywhere; it will only get you marked as spam. Best practice is to segment your audience and only target those who you feel could benefit or truly want what you’re selling. 6 - Avoid shared IPs If you can get a dedicated IP address, fantastic! It will avoid you experiencing the repercussions of other people’s mistakes. However, this isn’t a great option for anyone who sends less than 10k emails a day. If this is the case, make sure your email service provider is following all guidelines to maintain the reputation of the shared IP address pool. 7 - Refine your content Avoid anything that comes across as spammy in your email content. This includes words in all caps, multiple exclamation points, buzzwords like ‘free’, ‘win’, ‘cash’ etc. and long subject lines. 8 - Check feedback loops If your email doesn’t make it to an inbox, you can check why via the feedback loop that most email providers supply. This way, you can find out what the problem is and fix it before it ruins your email domain reputation. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 34
Improving your email campaigns: 3 top tips If your domain isn’t the problem, it’s time to check your campaigns. If you’ve followed all of our copywriting tips then it’s just a matter of fine- tuning a few things. Use this checklist: 1 - Check your subject lines Are your subject lines catchy but free from spam phrases? Instead of using words like “Free!” or “Click now”, write something that’s going to stand out in a crowded inbox, offering real value to the reader. 2 - Ask for preferences Keeping up with what your audience wants is one of the most important elements of email marketing. If your recipients have opted into your content but aren’t enjoying it, ask them what they want to read. It’s as simple as that. It gives users an option other than immediately unsubscribing or deleting your email. 3 - Are your emails optimised for mobile? Lastly, it’s important that your emails work for mobile as mobile phones constitute 70% of global website traffic. This means at least half of your prospects are using mobile to check their emails. Top-level executives or CEOs will check their emails on their mobiles as they move between meetings. The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 35
So your email marketing needs to work on both desktop and mobile. If it doesn’t, you may lose out on sales. The rule of thumb is to keep your messaging short so that your prospect doesn’t need to scroll. One great top tip is to send your email to yourself before you send it to anyone else. If your message doesn’t fit on your mobile screen, then you need to edit it! Email marketing metrics: what should you track? Marketing isn’t cut and dry, and it’s the same for email marketing. You need to put in the effort and adapt to ongoing industry changes. This is why tracking your marketing metrics is an important part of email marketing. It helps your team focus their efforts. It gives you insights into how you can improve your campaigns going forward. Here’s a list of Cognism’s must-track email marketing metrics: The AThe ANYTNYTHING BUT BHING BUT BAASIC gSIC guide tuide to emo email mail markarkeetingting / / 3636
1 - Top-level metrics Lasering in on the following revenue focused metrics will help you win at email marketing: Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs). Sales Qualified Opportunities (SQOs). Closed-won deals. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR). Average deal size. Average sales cycle. However, your focus shouldn’t only be on the deals you’ve won through your email campaigns. It’s important to track your team’s efficiency as well, by following these metrics: Cost per MQL. Cost per MB (Meeting Booked). Cost per SQO. Cost per acquisition. When tracking these metrics, it’s vital to look at which campaigns are creating conversions. This will give you a clearer idea of how to make your email marketing more efficient. To help with this, you’ll also need to track the following: 1.1. Your average response time to an inbound request. At Cognism, we target under 3 minutes and compensate our SDRs on this by tracking it daily. 1.2. The percentage of inbound requests that have an outcome. We try to target 70%. It’s one thing to action an inbound straight away, but you also want to motivate your SDRs to be persistent and track down outcomes consistently. The AThe ANYTNYTHING BUT BHING BUT BAASIC gSIC guide tuide to emo email mail markarkeetingting / / 3737
1.3. Stalled and inactive MQLs: by region, rep and campaign. At Cognism we have an “Inbound Dashboard”, where we track these metrics. You can do the same via an Excel or Google sheet, that can be updated by your team. 2 - Campaign metrics “CW and revenue are your ultimate metrics; you want to be optimising for this at all times. You may find that a campaign generates leads but not SQOs – if that happens, turn it off. You may find it generates SQOs but not revenue – why? How can you adapt it, to get people over the line?” “You want to be looking at the closed-won number and what is an acceptable customer acquisition cost for your business or product to truly determine campaign success. MMR is individually important too, you want to optimise your campaign to churn out the biggest deals possible, not just deals themselves.” Liam Bartholomew, Global Head of Demand Generation, Cognism Working hand in hand with your top-level metrics are your campaign metrics. There are six that you absolutely need to track: 1.1. Leads It’s important to watch your raw number of leads and your CPL so you can keep track of how many are coming in. However, it’s not a determining metric on its own. You can accept more or fewer leads or a higher CPL if the metrics further down the funnel look good. The AThe ANYTNYTHING BUT BHING BUT BAASIC gSIC guide tuide to emo email mail markarkeetingting / / 3838
1.2. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) These are the B2B leads that fit within your ICP and can be worked into your pipeline. It’s always a good idea to qualify your leads before handing them over to your outbound sales team. This way, the funnel metrics further down don’t start to show poor quality leads. 1.3. Meetings booked Keeping track of your meetings booked will give you a good indication of the quality of your MQLs. 1.4. Meetings attended Like meetings booked, tracking the meetings your AEs attend is a good indicator of the quality of your MQLs and helps you predict your SQOs. 1.5. Sales Qualified Opportunities (SQOs) This is a metric you want to watch closely, and one you should optimise campaigns toward. Your SQOs are strongly indicative of incoming revenue, while also telling you which of your campaigns are performing well. “An SQO is a sales rep, saying, “I think this could close,” and you want to be generating as many of those as possible. It’s important to note that all SQOs are not the same, and although indicative of a successful campaign, your incoming revenue is the most honest indicator of campaign success.” Liam Bartholomew, Global Head of Demand Generation, Cognism After these six, you’ll find that there are a number of vanity metrics you can track too. The AThe ANYTNYTHING BUT BHING BUT BAASIC gSIC guide tuide to emo email mail markarkeetingting / / 3939
You can never monitor too many metrics, which is why you should also have your finger on the pulse of these. Your vanity metrics include: Impressions/engagement. Open rate. Bounce rate. Unsubscribe rate. Newsletter signups. Email marketing do’s and don’ts: a checklist Think you’ve got email marketing down? Here’s a handy checklist to reference the next time you’re working on a campaign. Word to the wise - we’ve included some extra tips not discussed above! The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 40
DO DON’T Segment your lists Send the same email to everyone Add value Push a sale on your prospect from email one Keep your emails short Send confusing essays Use a friendly, conversational tone Use confusing jargon, formal language or write like a robot Personalise your emails by using Make your email too generic merge fields Make it all about how you can help Make it all about who you are and your prospect how great your product is Make your CTAs clear Include too many CTAs Use short, clever subject lines Use long subject lines that include numbers or spammy words Use text-only emails for sequences Overload your prospect with images, GIFS and videos Embed links over words like ‘Our Include open links and tell a website’ or ‘here’ prospect to click on it A/B test Stop testing and bin your campaign Provide exit routes in nurture Send your recipients content they programs for the unengaged don’t want over and over Proofread. Does it sound like you’re Overuse exclamation marks and a human talking to another human? spammy words Include an unsubscribe button Trap prospects in never-ending nurture campaigns Track metrics Continue doing the same thing without optimising your campaigns The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 41
Email marketing: closing comments So there you have it! Everything you need to know about email marketing from the benefits, basics and copywriting to planning and optimising - not to mention metric tracking! We’ll leave you with this final quote: “If social media is the cocktail party, then email marketing is the coffee meetup - the original 1 to 1 channel.” Erik Harbison, Co-Founder, The Marketing Help So take our advice and start stirring up energised campaigns that keep your prospects coming back for more! The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 42
Better data = better email marketing Want to take your email marketing to the next level? Then Cognism is the tool for you! We’re the world’s best globally compliant sales intelligence platform. What do we offer? Validated emails and mobile numbers for decision-makers in your local and global markets Access to highly targeted, in-market audiences on demand Full compliance with international data regulations Find out how Cognism can change the way you do email marketing. Book your screen-share today The ANYTHING BUT BASIC guide to email marketing / 43
Contact Cognism today So there you have it - the 8 stages of the B2B sales process, explained! Did you get value from our handbook? If your answer’s yes, connect with us on our social media. We’d love to hear your feedback. The B2B Sales Process Handbook / 29
