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Following up on the blog entry I started on January 6th, today I’d like to wrap up my e-mail marketing tips with six ideas to help build a loyal e-mail following.

Build a loyal e-mail following tip #1: Be practical.
How many times have you read an article in an e-newsletter and thought “OK, now what do I do with this information?” Too many people stay at the 50,000 foot level with their content, which presents an opportunity for the rest of us.

Anybody can say, for example, that it takes great talent to make a great company. Very few actually show us how to find, hire, and retain them. It takes more effort to do, but figuring out how to solve problems and sharing your tips with others via e-mail will make readers clamor for your content… and your business.

Build a loyal e-mail following tip #2: Demonstrate leadership.
Another way to build a loyal e-mail following and gain respect is to demonstrate thought leadership through your e-marketing messages.

Provide context around current events. Offer up a different perspective. Or analyze recent trends. Then take your observations one step further and really help your readers with practical tips and advice they can put into practice.

Build a loyal e-mail following tip #3: Respect your audience.
Don’t pollute their Inbox with a never-ending supply of gimmicky material. I’ll tolerate one marketing message per week from any given source, but when I start receiving the same (or similar) messages three or four times each week I begin to tune out.

Figure out what’s tolerable for your audience and stick with it. In many cases I would suggest two e-mails per month is sufficient to build a relationship without getting in your reader’s face.

Build a loyal e-mail following tip #4: Don’t push your agenda.
Or to be perfectly blunt, don’t sell.

In most cases I believe it’s  unrealistic to think you can convert a B2B prospect into a customer through a series of e-messages.

That’s not to say e-mail doesn’t work to stimulate sign-ups for a webinar, or to promote an upcoming conference or special offer. They work, but I recommend you use them sparingly, and in conjunction with other non-sales messages.

The key is to nurture prospects through e-mail with educational literature, perspective, and practical advice. If they like what they see, they’ll approach you when they’re ready to buy.

Build a loyal e-mail following tip #5: Be different.
Even though marketers are taught to differentiate, somehow we all seem to get trapped in messages that are indistinguishable.

Part of this, I think, has to do with how we communicate. One easy way to show you’re different is to reveal some personality in the messages you send.

I’ve seen some e-mail marketers take this to the extreme, sharing their CEO’s weight loss challenges, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

Instead, I suggest you think about your audience as a single person when you’re creating content. By keeping your focus on the person (not the crowd), you’re bound to end up with messages that reveal the real you.

Build a loyal e-mail following tip #6: Test.
I read somewhere (sorry but I can’t recall where) that very few e-mail marketers actually take the time to test. That’s a shame. Yes, testing takes time, but it provides valuable insight into the psyche of your reader.

And if my January 6th assertion rings true this year — e-mail marketing is going to get a whole lot harder during 2009 — testing will be the best way to tackle the challenges that lie ahead.

Sue Anderson
Marketing Lure, Inc.

Marketers: Brace yourself for stiffer competition this year in the e-mail marketing world.

The December 8, 2008 issue of BtoB Magazine confirmed (not surprisingly, I might add) that marketers plan to beef up their e-mail marketing efforts during 2009.

Of the folks surveyed, nearly half (43.5%) say they’re keeping budgets intact, but they’re shifting dollars away from more traditional tactics like print, direct mail, and events. Almost 75% say they’ll increase online spending, and more specifically, 68.3% say they’ll put more money towards e-mail marketing this coming year.

What this means for the average person is a more cluttered Inbox, and as their Inbox grows, they’ll naturally become more aggressive at cleaning out the clutter.

Marketers who want to avoid the trash heap (and who doesn’t have this for a goal?!) will need to step up their efforts to capture the recipient’s attention.

If you’re still sending out e-newsletters with the same bland subject line (e.g. “XYZ Widgets Newsletter: 2009-01-05”), stop! You’re providing zero information that helps your readers make an educated decision on whether to keep your e-mail or toss it.

Here’s four quick tips to help you build attention-grabbing subject lines that will make your readers want to open your e-mail.

Grab your reader’s attention tip #1: Front load your subject lines with powerful words.

While active sentences are easier to absorb, they often times push your most important words to the tail end of the sentence.

When it comes to subject lines, passive sentences  are not tabu. Flip the subject and object around so that key words and phrases are the very first words your reader will see.

Grab your reader’s attention tip #2: Focus on their pains and problems.

Stop talking about you: your newsletter, your weekly summary, your upcoming release, etc., and start demonstrating how you can help your readers with their problems.

And I do mean problems… not opportunities for improvement.

People want to do a lot of things, but they’re more likely to act upon the issues that are hurting them, or causing them great discomfort.

Grab your reader’s attention tip #3: Ask a question.

One way to accomplish this is to ask a question that gets the reader thinking about their pain, e.g.:

• Feel powerless against your larger competitors?
• Are you leaving money on the table?
• How much is your IP worth?
• Confused about…?

You get the idea.

Grab your reader’s attention tip #4: Be specific.

Watered down, vague subject lines will catch nobody.

“7 tips to find profitable partners,” “4-step plan to land enterprise deals,” or “11 common online marketing missteps that waste money” tells the reader exactly what they can expect to find when they open your e-mail.

Note that all three examples use concrete numbers. That’s because people respond to them! One word of caution, though: Don’t try to force your numbers to be nice round numbers like 10. If you have six great tips to help your reader stop wasting money on VAR partners that don’t deliver, don’t pollute the list with another four tips that are marginal at best.

In my next post on January 20th, I’ll share 5 additional e-mail marketing tips.

Sue Anderson
Marketing Lure, Inc.

This is the fourth in a series of articles on Online Lead Generation for B2B companies appearing Wednesdays in this blog.

Say the words “search engine” and Google immediately comes to mind. That’s fair because, as last month’s ComScore report shows, 63.9% of all searches are conducted on Google. This is followed by Yahoo (20.2%), and Microsoft (8.5%).

But Google, Yahoo and MSN are only three of the I-can’t-begin-to-even-guess-how-many search engines there are out there.

So how to you know where to be visible?

Enquiro Research, in its Business to Business Survey 2007, offers up a good way to think about the options. It requires understanding two things:

1. Types of search engines, and
2. Phases of your prospects’ buying process.

Types of search engines

For the business-to-business buyer, there are two broad types of search engines: general and vertical. Each of these comes into play in different stages of the buying process.

General search engines allow the user to search on just about anything imaginable. Most buyers begin their buying process with a visit to one of these. Not surprisingly, Google ranks the highest with 77.7% of B2B buyers naming it their favorite engine. Yahoo comes in second with 13.8% and MSN comes in third with 6.6%.

Vertical search engines focus on a specific industry or type of product. These types of search engines tend to be used by buyers who are further along in the buying process and are assembling a list of specific vendors.

As an example, Capterra.com focuses on software. ThomasNet focuses on industrial and manufacturing. KellySearch.com has created search engines for a number of specialties such as medical, IT, hospitality and supply chain.

Business.com is so broad it could almost be considered a general search engine. It is a directory of products and services that might be purchased by any business.

To find out which vertical search engines exist for your market, you’re going to have to do a little research. You can always start with – big surprise here – Google.

Phases of the buying process

The purchase of any complex or expensive product or service is actually a series of steps (phases) that take the buyer closer and closer to a buying decision. At a generic level, buying processes include the following stages:

1. Awareness – “Oops we have a problem”. In this first phase, buyers spend time learning about the problem and whatever solutions are available.
2. Research – “I know what we need; now who fits the bill?” Buyers gather information about specific vendors, compare them, screen them and create a short list.
3. Vendor selection / negotiation. “Who’s going to meet my requirements best?” Buyers finalize the specifics, negotiate the best price and select a vendor.
4. Purchase. “When can we get started?” The buy is authorized and completed.

Buyers tend to use search engines most in the awareness and research phases, although they’ll be looking for something different in each phase.  According to the Enquiro research, they will go to general search engines in the awareness phases – looking for more general information. In the research phases, when they are looking for more vendor-specific information, they may go to a vertical search engine.

Notice I said buyers in the research phase may go to a vertical search engine. That’s because not all of them do. Many will stick with the big guys like Google. So why worry about a vertical search engine at all? Sometimes the cost is lower and sometimes – but not always – the leads are better.

Which is the best for you?

We nearly always start our clients off with focusing on Google. The reasons are too numerous to cover in this article. But Google has its downside too – most notable being the cost. Vertical search engines and even secondary general search engines can be a good spot for marketers with a very small budget. They can also be an affective program addition once Google and, to a certain extent Yahoo, have been optimized.

The only way you’ll know which search engines work best for you is to try them out and carefully track your results. The most important result is conversion rate. We’ll cover that in a later article.

Technorati Tags: search engines, buying process, lead generation, business-to-business, B2B