EMAIL NEWSLETTERS FOR LEAD NURTURING LEADFORMIX BEST PRACTICES An Effective Touch Point for Long-Term Marketing Relationships
Introduction Email newsletters are no longer optional when it comes to B2B marketing. With a wide range of lead generation and lead nurturing benefits, e-newsletters can reap revenue benefits when appropriately timed and contain content that can influence and impact a reader s purchasing decision. When a newsletter is able to drive website hits or generate responses for offers and subscriptions, it means prospects are interested in the news that is being shared with them. Sharing on social circles is also a good indication of belief and trust in what you offer. So, what is it that converts a newsletter subscriber into a prospect? Let s look at some e-newsletter vitals that will enable marketers to generate leads, nurture them and build long-lasting relationships with prospects. Best Practices for Newsletter Newsletter design and structuring should be in line with the company s brand value. Every component of the newsletter requires detailed working in order to entice and provoke reader to open and read its content. Some of the best practices for each component are listed below. NEWSLETTER ESSENTIALS Value the recipient s time Provide ease of readability Offer high-value content Benchmark your results
1. KEEP DESIGN & STRUCTURING SIMPLE From Line & Subject Line Include the sender name and company name. Example: Companynamenewsletter@companyname.com Include the highest benefit your product is offering in the subject line. Avoid sales words that may put off the reader from opening the newsletter. Layout Maintain a portrait orientation for the newsletter. Feature the company logo on top. List the main content in a tabular form or in short paragraphs. Consistently align content and images in all issues. Include images need as a visual representation of the content. Provide URLs to read newsletters online. Limit newsletter length to not more than two scrolls. Provide a related reading reference link where the reader can download or view a research report/ebook related to the topic he has searched. Provide links to an online subscription page; this helps when the newsletter is shared in social media. Provide social media sharable provisions such as Tweet, Forward to Friend, Digg, etc. Provide copyright /privacy protection at the footer. Keep the subscribe/unsubscribe/opt-out options in a visible area of the layout. Aesthetics Follow a theme for every newsletter; it helps readers to relate to the content well. Images must not be lurid or too colourful. Ensure the newsletter is viewed even under different screen resolution. Present the newsletter into easily distinguishable sections for easily readability.
2. USE ENGAGING CONTENT To create engaging, crisp and relevant content, in order to sustain interest in reading, the following points need to be adhered to. Keep content bold so that it is easily readable at a glance. Display content as bullet points or in short paragraphs. Add Read More or Check out buttons to enable recipient to continue reading from the website. Links to external research reports, survey results, etc., can also be included. Add relevant graphs, analytics and images to summarize the content in individual articles or reports. SEO optimize content for keywords and phrases. Include engagement tactics such as polling, voting, games, videos, forum replies, etc. to engage reader for some time. 3. CREATE PERMISSION BASED EMAIL LIST With minimal attention spans and being mobile becoming the order of the day, it becomes necessary to send newsletters only to those who would prefer to receive it, in order to ensure that the marketing content and promotion strategy will work. Since people are more selective about the information they receive and use, creating permission- based email lists is the best solution. Ask for permission It helps readers distinguish between legitimate e-mails and spam. Keep asking - At regular intervals, reminding readers that they have a chance to opt out. It proves that you are a credible and trustworthy company that respects and places customer/ prospect interest before anything else. Don t share - Once you are have been given the permission to send the newsletter, don t share the contacts with third party vendors. All you have to do is create a web-page form for the user to enter his email address, or ask him to reply to your subscription email address and register for the newsletter.
4. COMMUNICATE EXPECTATIONS Once a reader has subscribed to your newsletter, you should let him know what to expect from the newsletter. This is to ensure that he does not receive irrelevant content even by accident. By communicating newsletter expectations, you only ensure continued support from him. Include the following in your first email to the subscriber. Frequency of newsletter delivery (Monthly or Weekly, Bi-weekly, Quarterly). Content he can expect every month (news updates, articles, quiz, puzzles, etc). Privacy policy which talks about confidentiality of email addresses used. - Provide links to your privacy protection documents or display privacy protection certifications near sign-up forms. Send a welcome email and display a confirmation message to acknowledge the subscription request.
5. PROVIDE UN-SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS Make the process of un-subscriptions easy and simple for the newsletter subscriber. Provide unsubscribe or opt-out message at the end of every newsletter you send. Send out a thank you message for previous subscriptions and process the un-subscription request ASAP. This is to ensure that your next newsletter release does not end up in the spam folder. Ask them if they want to take a break from receiving newsletters. This is called the SNOOZE option. This will let you retain them as a prospect and deliver newsletters once the snooze period is over. Provide manual unsubscribe options in the mail for those who face technical difficulty while trying out the automated unsubscribe option.
6. CALCULATE DELIVERY BENCHMARKS Newsletter performances can be an eye-opener in knowing the intent of the reader. Calculating the below mentioned delivery metrics help to customize future newsletter campaigns. Deliverability rate Measure of email deliverability to valid email addresses. Open rate Measure of the number of times a newsletter was read or viewed. Click through rate Measure of the number of times or number of links clicked on the newsletter. Conversion Rate Measure of new subscriptions, registrations, downloads etc.
7. TEST & TROUBLESHOOT Now that your newsletter is ready to go, do a live test. This helps to ensure deliverability and weed out technical difficulties which the reader may face during download or viewing the newsletter online. The total newsletter content should less than 50k in size. Test run emails to different email clients. Test teams will then be able to predict speed of deliverability and prevent them from being blocked by spam filters. Do not use special characters in the content since they may show up differently in different email clients. Provide a classic or basic version of the newsletter in case there is a deliverability issue arising out of Internet speed. 8. OFFER SOCIAL SHARING OPTIONS Social media sharing is the best way to let non-members view/readyour newsletter. By posting newsletter URLs on Twitter, Facebook, PR sites, etc., marketers can enable readers to share with peers, groups and connections. Add Call-to-Action buttons like Subscribe, Join, Add on home page and landing pages. Share newsletter links on blog and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Provide list of archived newsletters along with their themes, so that they may read content that interests them. Engage readers through social media about upcoming articles/reports in the newsletter. Add newsletter sign-up links in marketing collateral provided for download or viewing. Entice them with free ebook or report downloads for newsletter subscriptions. Click here for more information on LeadFormix Lead Nurturing. Share this ebook