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9 Email Marketing Best Practices for SaaS Companies

Email Marketing Best Practices for Your Campaigns

Email marketing is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways to generate awareness, interest, and decision-making among your contacts. Across all forms of digital marketing, email marketing has the highest ROI. What's more, emails are quick, easy, and cost-effective to produce. What else could you ask for when looking for solutions to scaling your tech business?

In our email marketing best practices, we share proven strategies that increase conversion rates. Improve the success of your email campaigns by using our nine expert tips below.

Step #1: Plan Your Strategy

Your first step in creating a strategy should be to identify the context of your email campaigns.  These factors will influence the goals you set and the tactics needed to achieve them. A SWOT analysis can help you identify the unique needs of the business and where to focus your email efforts based on these variables. Create your campaigns based on this practice to make the most of email marketing best practices.

  • Strengths: These are your value propositions. Consider the factors that give your company an edge over your competitors when developing your campaigns.
  • Weaknesses: Be realistic about the areas in which you don't excel, but where your competitors do. For example, the age of your team, number of deals, or experience in multiple industries. Depending on these variables, you may want to avoid or address these in your campaign.
  • Opportunities: These are trends, resources, or current situations that could benefit your campaigns. Examples include a major deal close, testimonials, a loyal subscriber base, a case study, recent press coverage, an award, and so on. 
  • Threats: Threats are trends, resources, or current situations that could be detrimental to your campaign. This could be a new competitor or limited budget and resources. Take this into consideration when creating your email campaign in order to avoid roadblocks.

Step #2: Determine Business Goals

The second step is to define your goals and objectives, and determine what you want to achieve from each specific campaign. First, it’s important to understand the difference between goals and objectives so that you can clearly set them. Establishing your ideal end result will empower you to create a thoughtful and productive strategy.

Goals are the ultimate outcome that you hope to achieve. Among your goals might be improving your ROI, increasing subscribers, or boosting sales, for example.

Objectives are the milestones that contribute to your goals. They may be similar, but the purpose of an objective is always to serve a larger goal. For example, if you want to increase subscriber engagement, an objective might be to increase open rates.

While your goals may be open-ended, such as increasing sales, you should define them specifically and use the SMART framework.

Step #3: Choose the Right Email Tools

To create, send, automate, and test email campaigns effectively, you must have the right marketing tools. When shopping for solutions, consider the size of your database and whether your business focuses on B2B or B2C. Some tools may cater to one or the other, or offer different packages depending on your needs.

Most importantly, look for platforms that offer integration with your CRMs, automation features based on behavioral triggers, and responsive templates for mobile optimization. Data provided should be detailed for you to analyze customer behavior and determine which communication methods are most effective.

Top email marketing tool recommendations to add to your martech stack for B2B include: 

  • Pardot
  • Marketo
  • Eloqua
  • HubSpot
  • Sender
  • Keap
  • Customer.io
  • Sharpspring
  • Campaign Monitor
  • Klaviyo 

Step #4: Get Granular with Segmentation

Organize your lists to ensure you send subscribers what they want at the right time. In the absence of segmentation, you send the same emails to all contacts in your database, which can be time-consuming and fruitless. Segmenting correctly will allow you to deliver what each contact wants, they will engage in your marketing because they will receive more relevant content, and you will get better results.

Below are some examples to categorize your contact lists by using email marketing best practices:

  • Website or specific pages visited

  • Industry or role

  • Previous contact with your sales team

  • Information in custom fields 

  • Organization type

  • Persona type

First group by buyer personas, then segment those lists based on the other information.  Depending on the type of marketing you do, you may send emails to up to seven to ten lists on a regular basis. 

Step #5: Utilize Outbound Practices to Increase Audiences 

Cold emails are particularly useful for B2B marketing. Through outbound efforts, you can increase your exposure beyond the audiences you are accustomed to targeting. As a result, your brand awareness and conversions will increase, which will lead to more qualified leads entering your sales pipelines. 

Email blasts in particular can be a very effective outbound marketing tool. Using a mass email to reach as many prospects as possible within your segments is a great way to build up your list of contacts. These are particularly effective when promoting a new product or service that you know will benefit your untapped market. Easy to produce and cost-effective, email blasts can get you the furthest reach possible in a short amount of time.

Additionally, cold emails are personal communications sent to particular individuals but they follow the same principles as email blasts. Engaging with prospects you believe would largely benefit from what you have to offer is how you begin the conversation. A simple email introducing who you are and why they need your product can drive more leads into your pipeline than organic efforts alone. A thoughtfully crafted message can help you build relationships by introducing yourself and your brand to prospects you would not otherwise have the opportunity to reach. 

Step #6: A/B Test All Emails

Email marketing best practices recommend testing as many email components as possible. In addition to subject lines, headers, and body copy, also test the “from” name, preview text, length, imagery, time sent, and CTA placement. 

Set parameters for your test, including how long you will run it. Decide the percentage of control versus test emails you will send. You can set the test to run automatically or manually if you want to look at more data beyond just the campaign. Compare the metrics and engagement levels of each testing variable to get a better idea of your audience’s engagement behaviors. 

Step #7: Use Advanced Personalization

It’s now commonplace to add name tokens to email, but it’s important to personalize your emails far beyond just using their name. In this regard, segmentation will be of considerable help, as it will make it easier to personalize depending on the industry, organization size, and so on.

Personalization examples include promoting offers exclusively for them, highlighting features relevant to their situation, using copy that reflects your brand's voice, but also the tone in which their brand communicates. You can also use location-specific targeting if it is relevant to your business. Find common ground whenever possible. Industry events and conferences, awards, popular roles, industry-wide problems are other topics to touch on in order to tailor messages further. 

Step #8: Keep Customer Data Clean

Email marketing best practices have a heavy focus on data. This is because approximately 30% of your company's information is outdated. Your marketing campaigns and brand perception can be adversely affected by bad data, so it's important to clean your CRM data routinely.

As a result of eliminating unneeded data, your opt-in marketing automation and results will improve. Standard rules to keep this data clean is to create standard practices around data entry to avoid incorrect information or duplicates. It is also vital to purge invalid addresses and include unsubscribe options in every email to keep your reputation high.

Step #9: Re-Engage Inactive Subscribers

Inactive subscribers can still become satisfied customers with the right attention and nurturing. Offer them exclusive offers and discounts in an effort to regain their attention and win them back. They may have fallen off because they weren't ready to make a purchasing decision based on budget, and this can get them back on track. You can automate this process to ensure you reach each subscriber at the right time.

Another tactic is to mention their lack of engagement, adding another level of personalization. This shows you have noticed and want to win them back. At this stage you should also ask for feedback so you can make sure to keep them engaged the way they prefer. Get to know what products or features they are interested in so you can send them emails that are relevant to only those. Find out what type of emails they would like to receive, such as promotional, informational, and news updates. Re-engagement options can also help companies avoid poor email reputations caused by low open rates.

Restructure Your Email Strategy with a Digital Marketing Audit

Take advantage of our email marketing best practices to grow your business. The first step is to conduct a marketing audit, which reveals the strengths and weaknesses of your current email strategy. 

As part of our auditing process, we assess your marketing strategies, goals, systems, and performance. Based on the results of your audit, our marketing specialists can help you develop a more effective email marketing campaign. Performing an audit prior to launching a new product or service can also result in greater campaign success as well. 

Reach out to us and learn about how our marketing audit services maximizing your email campaign results.

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