Smarter Email Marketing: Restart Your B2B Lead Generation And Grow Your Business

The death of email marketing has been greatly exaggerated.

I’m sure you’ve heard the discussions about the impending decline of email and the rise of social media. But independent marketing studies suggest that’s not the case. Let’s see what the data tells us.

· 2012 Exact Goals Survey – 66% prefer email as the #1 marketing communication channel.

· EmailVision Study 2012 – 89.2% of marketing managers say email is still as important or more important to their overall marketing strategy compared to two years ago.

· A merkle study – 74% of online adults prefer to receive corporate communications via email over social media, direct mail, text messages or phone.

Actually, the email marketing perspective, with a twist, is stronger and more popular than ever. Integration is the twist. In a Strong Email Marketing Trends Survey, 68% of business leaders intend to integrate email marketing with social media. And marketing spend for email marketing (60%) and social media (55%) shows that business leaders intend to follow an integrated approach.

The New Email Marketing Strategy

Using email by integrating it with social media, search, and content marketing results in smarter email marketing. Because email covers all parts of the buying cycle and promotes authorization marketing, it is powerful and effective. With its subscription feature, emails go to a targeted audience willing to receive them. By itself, email fosters interactivity. But combined with social media, search, and content marketing, email marketing optimizes results.

Integration of email marketing with social networks

Social networks connect prospects, customers and companies. Once this is done, relationships develop offline via email or phone. Email is still the preferred method because it is fast, effective and efficient. With the integration, both channels reinforce each other as social media informs email marketing. Respond to prospect questions on social networking sites in a personal, engaging, and focused way. This deepens and broadens your social network. And take care of your brand. Include links in your email to your social networking sites to increase your following. Also, kindly encourage customers to recommend your business by sharing your email. Integrating email with social networks improves efficiency more than using each channel independently.

Email marketing integration with search

Email’s superiority lies in its ability to address every part of the buying cycle. And it encompasses permission marketing, which has replaced interruption marketing. Integration with search gives you several benefits. Newsletters or eZines are a great way to broaden your reach and build awareness. Adding relevant keywords to your emails increases the likelihood that prospects will find your newsletters. You can also drive more prospects from search engines to your website by posting newsletters on your site. Keyword rich emails also help increase the chances of your emails going viral. Combining email with search gives customers the marketing they want. As Jay Baer would say, email has “Youtility”. This helps improve your leads and grow your business.

Integration of email marketing with content marketing

This is a no-brainer. You can use email as content, as a content delivery tool, and as a way to drive conversions. Let’s first take email as content. Do not write about your products and services. Instead, focus on solving customer problems or discuss innovative industry news and trends that affect your customers. Email builds trust by posting relevant information. Email also serves as an effective delivery tool. You can attach value-added content like product brochures, case studies, and videos. Finally, email can drive prospects and customers to landing pages. This improves conversions. Integrating email with content makes it easy for prospects and customers to access, digest, and act on the information you’ve posted.

Email Marketing Insights

Due to the huge growth of mobile devices, email marketing may hit a tipping point in 2015. Email today has many benefits, but its future lies in integration with other marketing channels. As business leaders pursue the integration of email marketing with other channels, it suggests that email is here to stay. Clearly, your competitors think so, judging by where they’re spending their money.

Questions for the Marketing Expert

Does your marketing plan take a holistic approach? Are you integrating email best practices into your marketing efforts? Are you increasing your leads and growing your business in the most effective way possible? If you don’t have an unlimited budget, consider integrating smarter email marketing with your other marketing channels. If your lead generation needs a reboot, email might be a good place to start.