B2b Email Marketing Etiquettes You Should Follow
One of the best ways to communicate in the B2B world is through email. Email is a great way to handle B2B marketing, as long as they are correctly handled. Marketing emails must be clear and limited in length. There are many b2b email marketing other techniques you should keep in mind when you are working on a B2B email marketing campaign.
Table of Contents
Subject Is Key
Many people scan the subject line of their email and use that to determine if they want to read it. Today, most people read their email on their mobile device, making it even more important to catch their attention quickly. Your subject should be short and help the reader understand the content of the email.
Beginning and Ending
No matter how casual the interaction is with another person, you always start and end with a greeting. The same should be right for your email. For every email, you want to start it with some address. Closing is a little easier because you can create an email signature and you can end your emails with that.
Make sure that your signature includes your name, your business and all contact information. Make sure that your opening and closing are professional.
Upfront Clarity
Do not make your email any longer than it has to be. Get to the point from the beginning of your email. If you are making a request, do it immediately. If you find that your email has to be longer to send the message correctly, then use bullet points, so it is easy to read.
Quick Response Time
When you receive emails that are legitimate and not spam, you should respond to them within 24 hours. Even if you are providing an interim response until you have a better answer, customers want to know that you have received their email and are working on it.
Out Of Office
If you will be away and not able to respond to your email within 24 hours, you should have an out of office reply automatically send. It can be just a simple message that states you are out of the office, and when you are expected to return.
If you have someone that can respond to inquiries in your place, you can leave their name and contact information on your automatic reply.
Always Proofread
It is essential to proofread anything before you send it. You want to make sure you catch any mistakes that you make. It is easy to misspell something or make errors with grammar. Simple proofreading of the email can catch these mistakes.
You may want to consider having someone else proofread your email for you. If you realize that you made a mistake in something you send, you should retract it and apologize immediately.
Permission Is Important
When you create a B2B email database, you must make sure that everyone that you add to that list has permitted you to send them marketing emails. It can be as simple as having people check the opt-in box when they provide their email address to you. You also must respect when your contracts specify a specific type of contact that you contact them in that way only.
Avoid Spam
You should understand that for most of your contacts, there is a fine line between sending just enough emails and spam. You never want to spam your contacts because that is the fastest way to lose people.
If you are not sure where that line is, you may want to do some testing to determine how many emails you should send to meet the proper number of emails and not cross the spam line.
Allow Contacts To Unsubscribe
You need to keep B2B marketing data lists. However, you need to allow those contacts to opt-out of your marketing emails at any time. It should be included in every single email that you send to your contacts. It is your legal responsibility to allow contacts to opt-out from your list. You also want to provide your contacts with an easy way to unsubscribe to your marketing.
You should also consider allowing your contacts to opt into another type of communication from you, instead of just email. When you allow someone to unsubscribe from your marketing, you need to respect their unsubscribe request. You should remove them as soon as possible from your list.
Email Replies Should Go To A Person
When you send an email to a contact, they often want to respond to it. You should allow your contacts the ability to reply to your email and have it go to a person, and not at generic email box. Remember, contacts expect a response within 24 hours to emails.
Use HTML wisely
HTML is typically much better to look at over plain text, but too much of it can be a bad thing. When you use HTML, you should use it sparingly so that you do not annoy those who are receiving your emails. You can use bold, bullets, headers and images without launching into javascript and Flash. If you do want to use HTML, you can offer a plain text version of the same email to help those who are not able to render HTML correctly.
Check Your Lists
When you send emails, pay attention if the email bounces back. If you receive a notification that the email cannot be delivered, then you should remove it from your list of contacts. You want to make sure that the lists you use are accurate.