A Practical Guide to Integrate Email Marketing with Your B2B Social Media & Mobile Strategy

B2B marketing must take email off the endangered species list.
We’ve heard a lot about the dynamic growth of social media and its impact on B2B marketing initiatives altogether.  It is shaping the behaviors of B2B buyers as they search industry communities, social networks and blogs for relevant content that helps them achieve their business objectives or solve an organizational problem.

The influence of social media causes these B2B decision makers to expect more out of the organizations they do business with.  They want interaction and a two-way dialogue and an end to the former shotgun approach of the email blast.

But this does not spell the extinction of email.  B2B marketers have learned hard lessons in the last few years.  The best practitioners have eliminated indiscriminate email blasts and now incorporate strict methods for permission-based email marketing.  The mandate of our new social audience dictates it.

Email Marketing Trends for 2011
And now there are some interesting trends coming to the forefront that give B2B marketing more incentive to communicate to a social audience via email.  A few weeks ago, ShareThis released its report that measured the sharing and clicking habits of more than 300 million people a month – and there is something that stood out.

The report points to the fact that Facebook accounts for more than 38% of sharing traffic.  It is believed that sharing traffic accounts for an estimated 10 percent of Internet traffic and 31 percent of referral sites from search and social.  But more significant than Facebook is the fact that Email held its own in second place – owning 17 percent of sharing traffic over the likes of Twitter, which accounted for only 11 percent.

To underscore this, comScore released its email usage report earlier this year that could convince B2B marketing to boost its budget for email promotions.  The report found that though Web-based email is down 6 percent, Mobile-based email usage is on the rise. In fact, the number of people who check their email every day via mobile devices has grown from 31.1 million to 43.5 million users – an increase of a whopping 40 percent.

And if those two statistics are not enough to convince the skeptics of the efficacy of email marketing, consider the fact that a good number of B2B decision makers are not using Web-based email in their communications.  These B2B buyers are receiving content via company-based email.  No one could suggest that company-based email is declining since this form of asynchronous messaging is still a large part of business communications.

Today’s readers want content & community
Rather than trying to drive the nail into the coffin for email marketing, B2B marketers should focus on what works.  Email can actually be a very effective tool in your social media strategy as long as it is:

• Relevant – providing content that your target audience values,
• Personalized – segmented according to your audience’s interests, and
• Permission-based – subscribed to by your audience.

Ultimately, if the email follows these rules and leads readers to valuable content and community, email marketing is not dead… it’s thrives.

8 Practical tips to integrate email with your B2B social media strategy

1. Make your email social friendly

• At the top of your email newsletter, add share buttons enabling users to share email content on the social network of their choice.  Add social links enabling them to gain access to your company’s social fan pages and groups.
• Store your email newsletter on your Web server like a Web page – then post the content on your social media sites.

Delivering a B2B email marketing strategy in an opt-in social media age – Pertinence, Personalization and Privacy are key

Email is not dead… the way we use it has just changed

For years now we have heard that email marketing is dead.  To borrow from Mark Twain, I believe the rumors of the death and demise of email marketing have been greatly exaggerated.

Now we can’t be too harsh on those who would believe the death of email to be true.  After all, there is a great deal of research in the last year pointing to the decline of Web-based email usage.  In its US Digital Year in Review, comScore reported that the total Web-based email usage declined by 8 percent in 2010.  The same comScore report found that social networking sites accounted for 12 percent of all time spent online last year.  And we can’t forget the Nielsen ratings that reported how if all time spent on the Internet were condensed into one hour, 13 minutes and 36 seconds would be dedicated to accessing social media, whereas only five minutes would be dedicated to accessing email.

But to counter these findings was research conducted by Forrester that found that email continues to have a strong influence with online buying behaviors while social media was light on direct revenue and more influential in product awareness.  Furthermore, going back to the comScore report, it is discovered that, of the top mobile device activities, 30.5 percent of smartphone and mobile device users are accessing their email while only 24.7% used the same for accessing social networking or blogs.  To underscore this, consider the Nielsen report listed above that found users of mobile devices spending more than 40 percent of their time accessing email and only 10 percent of the time accessing social networking.

So while I am one of the first to acknowledge that the rise of social media implies we refocus our budgets and marketing activities, I am not so quick to say we must reduce our spend in email marketing.

Indeed, social media is altering our online behaviors, but email marketing has not come to an end… the way we use it has just shifted.

What are the challenges for B2B email marketing strategies in 2011?

Unfortunately, there is a lot of head trash surrounding email marketing simply because of its affiliation with spam. And B2B marketing behaviors have not helped – as many B2B organizations have been notorious in the past for buying lists based on demographics and blasting out emails indiscriminately.  Fewer returns on these activities have taught us a hard lesson that, regardless of the value of a B2B white paper or Webcast, blasting emails to purchased lists hurts your brand and increases reports of abuse.

So in 2011, B2B marketing is facing a number of challenges with email marketing.  Respondents to a recent B2B Magazine survey stated they have a number of concerns for their email marketing activities moving forward:
1) Competition from Social Media: 28% believe that social media will compete heavily for the attention of the email recipient.
2) Email reputation: 27% are concerned they will encounter increased backlash due to email reputation and will be up against blacklisting, higher bounce-back ratios, stricter spam filters and spam ratings.
3) Permission base: Up to 31 percent of the respondents report they will be challenged to build an opt-in email list in 2011.

Pertinence, Personalization and Privacy are the key for success in email marketing for 2011 and beyond.

And B2B marketers should be concerned about the challenges that lie ahead.  Let’s face it, we now live in an opt-in world.  Buy a list for email marketing and you will get blacklisted.  List rental houses will tell you that their email lists are 100% opt-in.  But no one signs up to a list perpetually.  So there is no middle ground on purchasing and sending to an email list… it must be permission-based.

No matter how valuable you think your content is… if you purchase a list rental and blast out an email to it… you are a spammer.

But email is not spam. 

You might be a B2B marketing spammer: 6 spam errors made in social media, email, & SEO

Stand-up comedy has surged in it’s popularity since the 1980s with it’s fresh style of experiential and observational reporting.  Comics like Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais, and Chris Rock have made millions laugh at themselves just by observing “normal” human behavior.  One of my favorites is Jeff Foxworthy, whose subtle style helps us all come to grips with the fact that our own awkward behaviors just might mean we’re “rednecks.”

Some of Foxworthy’s observational humor includes: You might be a redneck if …
“You think potted meat on a saltine is an hors d’ouerve.”
“You have spent more on your pickup truck than on your education.”
“Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.”
“You think the last words to The Star Spangled Banner are ‘Gentlemen, start your engines.'”

If you grin at any of these punchlines … you either are a redneck or know someone who is.

Observing B2B marketing behaviors that could label you a spammer

From time to time, I think it’s necessary for B2B marketing teams to engage in experiential and observational reporting on themselves.  The changes in marketing are evolving at a quickened pace over the last 10 years due to the influence of social media and social networking.  Many marketing practices that were acceptable in 2002 are deemed unacceptable behavior for marketing tactics in 2011 and beyond.

Today, if you behave improperly with your marketing tactics, you risk being reported as a spammer.  This can lead to being blacklisted, losing followers, being “Un-liked”, a reduction in your ranking on search engines, and generally wasting your marketing budget as you turn off your audience.

Now we normally equate spam with unethical email practices.  But the definition of spam is also evolving as we see the use of social media and social networking grow in popularity with B2B marketing teams.

The definition of email spam, or unsolicited bulk email (UBE), is the practice of sending unwanted email messages with commercial content in large quantities to an indiscriminate set of recipients.

So how should we expand this definition of spam to other digital marketing behaviors?

Now matter how you slice it – You might be a spammer if …

1) Email: You might be a spammer if … you pad your unsubscribe link and make it a 6 point font size … you disregard your recipients interests and send bulk email indiscriminately … you ignore responses from recipients in your inbox … you think its okay to send emails to the same list more than once a week or more than the agreed upon frequency … you have relaxed rules for what it means to “opt-in.”
2) LinkedIn: You might be a spammer if … you’ve ever joined a group and began pitching your product or service without joining the discussion … you post discussion threads that don’t add value to the group … you create more than one discussion thread per week.
3) Twitter: You might be a spammer if … you constantly use your Tweets as a business card … you follow others just so they will follow you … you never reTweet the posts of other Tweeters … you use your “Thanks for the follow” message to pitch your business … you post meaningless status updates with links to your company Website.
4) Facebook: You might be a spammer if … you send blanket invites indiscriminately to your entire Facebook fan page network … you think it’s okay to delete comments from irate fans  or ignore them … you barrage the wall of your company’s Facebook fan page with multiple promotions everyday … you only respond to fans who rave over your product or service.

Is email marketing really dead? Five lessons of social etiquette for your email marketing strategy.

We all agree… Social media has rocked the digital world. The evidence is everywhere.

It took Twitter 3 years to get it’s billionth tweet … but now there are more than 50 million tweets a day. Lately, some weeks have seen a billion tweets. LinkedIn? They’ve recently surpassed the 100 million user marker. And not to be forgotten is the king of social media… 63% of social media users are turning to Facebook at least once a week. There are over 152 million Facebook users in the United States alone, which only accounts for 24% of the global audience. Now, many social media practitioners and analysts are wondering if Facebook could cross the one billionth user mark by the end of 2011.

Again, the velocity of social media is sky rocketing.

Is email marketing really dead? Long live social media?
So with all of these phenomenal statistics firing at us about the success of social media, should marketing prepare to dispense with their email marketing strategies with the foregone conclusion that social media reigns?

Not so fast. Recent research on email usage and email marketing points to a thriving channel that is producing results in many marketing strategies.

Merkle recently released its findings from the “View from the Digital Inbox, 2011” that demonstrates how email is still the preferred method of commercial messaging for 74% of all online adults. The report is not dismissive of either social media or email. It more reports that email, mobile and social networking are simply converging.

One of the more fascinating findings of the report states that social networkers are actually checking their email accounts four or more times per day. And 30 more percent are checking their email account two to three times per day. Those who are non-social networkers are looking into their email accounts less. Another digital behavior shows that an average of 55 percent of mobile users appear to be checking email using mobile devices. It seems there is a bit of a symbiotic relationship between social, mobile and email.

Email usage is thriving
There are more fascinating statistics that demonstrate that social media has not yet killed email usage. The same survey found that 88% of respondents checked their personal email 1+ daily in 2007. This went down only one percent by 2010. And usage of commercial accounts in the same time period grew. In 2007, 54% checked their commercial email accounts daily. By 2010, 60% of respondents with a commercial email account were checking their email more than once a day.

So this should cause marketing practitioners to pause as they ponder reducing their email marketing budgets.