B2C Email Marketing Offers More, Asks More
Is the grass greener on the B2C side of email marketing? Maybe. Because you’re dealing with consumers which typically means larger audiences, in many ways you have more tools in your arsenal. You can segment, target and test more, be more creative, and you have a handful of main ISPs to focus on, rather than the broad spectrum B2B marketers have to worry about.
However, having all those tools means using them responsibly. Below are a few points and email best practices to consider if your grass is on the B2C side:
Segmenting and targeting
Relevance is key in any email marketing campaign. But, in B2C email marketing, with a much bigger audience, segmentation becomes more of a responsibility than a fun add on. If you’re marketing to 50,000 people or even a million, there will be some subgroups within that audience you’ll want to tap into with more segmented, targeted email marketing. Make sure to use a Preference Center on your Web site where subscribers can choose how and how often they want to get your emails, and what they’re specifically interested in hearing about. Then be sure to use that data since you’re setting the expectation.
Optimization and testing
B2C email marketers should be focusing on optimization and testing. Your tests can give more conclusive results because the numbers are bigger, and that allows you to tweak and optimize your emails not just for higher delivery rates, but also higher open rates (better subject lines) and click throughs (better design and calls to action).
Whitelisting and delivery
In the B2C field, you’re also dealing primarily with major ISPs like AOL and Yahoo, not corporate firewalls, and that can streamline your processes because you have potentially fewer issues to deal with. You can focus on the main ISPs for getting whitelisted, and you can do a better job of testing how your emails render in those ISPs.
In general, it’s easier to cost-justify implementing some of the well-known email marketing best practices when your database is measured in the millions rather than tens of thousands. However, regardless of whether you’re a B2B or B2C email marketer (or a combination of both), there will always be an opportunity—and obligation—to test and optimize your ROI.
|
