The Whitelist

Email Marketing Best Practices for the Global Marketer

What does a global economy mean to a U.S. email marketer? It means you need help. And the DMA has it.

Yes, spam might be a distinctly American food, but as unsolicited email, it’s known the world over. And you want to avoid being seen as spam by making sure you know the rules and regulations for countries other than your own.

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) partnered with the Email Experience Council (EEC) to put together an exhaustive guide to global email compliance: the International Email Compliance Resource Guide. It covers 25 countries where you might be doing business—or want to be doing business. Using this guide means you can adhere to email marketing best practices that will keep you compliant the world over. And that means more revenue when you can save yourself from being blacklisted in a country with willing customers!

Download it. Refer to it. Hang onto it for future reference. You’ll be glad you did!

Get Help With Your B2B Email Marketing Best Practices

Within the wealth of B2B email marketing best practices tips, techniques and advice you’ll find in MarketingSherpa’s newest B2B email marketing handbook, “2011 B2B Marketing Advanced Practices,” you’ll find a way to measure your B2B Marketing Maturity Process Benchmark. It will help you score yourself for aspects of your email marketing program such as your overall execution, lead scoring, nurturing and analysis of your lead gen and automated programs.

MarketingSherpa suggests doing this self assessment because the new level of email marketing efficiency now required of you in 2011 requires “a high level of sophistication in execution.” They suggest knowing how well you’re doing now on email marketing best practices and processes before working on improvement.

If you do the assessment-and we as an email marketing vendor strongly suggest that you do-and you find your email marketing processes and/or team lacking, don’t worry. About 50% of companies need to improve in some or all of these areas, according to MarketingSherpa.

And ClickMail can help. No matter which of the four areas you’re weak in, ClickMail can work with you and your team to bring about immediate improvement and a roadmap for keeping your team-and email marketing best practices-on track moving forward.

All you have to do is ask…

B2B Email Marketing Best Practices in the Year 2011: Make It More Than Email

B2B email marketing can be tough. Certainly the sales cycles are longer than those enjoyed by the B2C email marketing counterparts. You typically have multiple people involved in the decision making. And you probably have some pretty decent giveaways, like whitepapers and other lead generators.

All that means is that the email best practices used for B2B email marketing aren’t necessarily the same email marketing best practices used for B2C email marketing. But in 2011, it could be there are consumer-oriented behaviors you should be mindful of to succeed in B2B email. And that’s the topic of our newest email marketing newsletter, The ClickMail Marketer.

As our article points out, your B2B customers are experiencing the social media revolution in their personal lives…just as B2C customers are. They are participating in social networking by liking brands on Facebook and following tweets.

Some of that behavior is going to carry over to the office and affect expectations about how you market to them.

Read more and learn how to make your 2011 B2B email marketing about more than email.

B2B Email Marketing: The Difference Is in the Numbers...and the Best Practices

If you’re like me, and you live, breathe, eat this email marketing stuff every day, you might also be like me, meaning you find yourself some days thinking there’s no difference between B2C and B2B email marketing. That’s because everything published about email marketing and email marketing best practices can pretty much be assumed to be about B2C email marketing…unless it says otherwise.

The difference is in the numbers: B2C email marketers are typically dealing with much bigger in-house email lists than B2B email marketers. Hence, the email marketing best practices articles and blog posts tend to be geared towards the B2C crowd based on sheer volume alone since they typically have bigger budgets and can do more.

But if you’re a B2B email marketer, you have to be careful when researching, reading and learning about email marketing best practices, because they may not necessarily don’t apply in the same way to your world.

While the typical B2C marketer may be looking at email best practices around cart abandonment and tracking conversions, the B2B marketer might be looking at automated drip campaigns as a way to push prospect through what us typically a much longer sales cycle.

Certainly as social media becomes ever more a part of our world and our approach to marketing, it seems like the lines between B2C and B2B email marketing best practices will blur. But not completely. And the B2B marketer who seeks out and learns from the email practices geared towards that distinct audience will win in the long run.

Need help with either B2C or B2B email marketing best practices? Start here!

Why Does B2B Email Marketing Miss the Mark?

In our business as an email deliverability consultant and email marketing vendor, we work with both B2C and B2B clients, and we certainly see a difference between the two! Now that difference is more easily understood, as Forrester reports B2B email marketing lags behind B2C in its maturation.

According to Forrester’s new report, B2B email marketing hasn’t improved in the past 4 years, and is maybe even worse off than it was in 2006, as reported by Mike Hotz in a ClickZ email newsletter.

In our experience, B2C companies typically have bigger in-house email lists compared to their B2B counterparts. A huge retailer, for example, might have millions of names on their list, while a B2B company has a much smaller database numbering 20,000.

That size list gives the consumer-based retailer a lot of flexibility to test repeatedly, and to segment their audiences into smaller, more targeted niches. Larger lists also most likely come with larger marketing budgets which allow for more testing and technology.

The B2B marketer seems to think this kind of refinement isn’t possible with a list that’s fraction of the size. Oh, but it is!

Of the 70 B2B email programs Forrester evaluated, only two passed. That means 68 failed! 97%! The results are based on 15 criteria that are basic email marketing best practices, like easy subscription and presentation. These aren’t rocket science. But for some reason, the email marketing best practices aren’t embraced by the B2B marketers.

Would your B2B company pass Forrester’s test? If not, why not? And if you need help, ensuring you would pass with flying colors if Forrester ever came knocking on your door, come to ClickMail.