With over 3.9 billion people using email daily, it’s a great channel for prospecting, communicating and building customer loyalty.
In this article, we explain everything you need to know about emailing.
What is emailing?
Emailing includes all methods of communication between a company and customers or prospects by email.
Why do emailing?
Marketing technique widely used today, emailing is the most profitable marketing channel with an ROI that can reach 3,800%!
Here is an overview of its main advantages:
A low cost. The best emailing tools offer unlimited campaign launches;
Ease of use. You do not need to have any programming knowledge to handle emailing tools.
Ideal for adopting personalized communication based on the interests and habits of the prospect.
Save time with the possibility of automating the entire process. Thanks to increasingly efficient autoresponders, it is possible to automate the sending of emails, reminders and responses.
The different types of emailing
There are different types of email marketing depending on the quality of the recipient (prospect or customer) or the objective of your campaign.
Here is a summary table:
Types of emailing | Goals to reach | Time of sending emails | Email recipients |
Prospecting email |
| During a prospecting campaign | Prospects selected according to predetermined targeting criteria |
Newsletter |
| According to a frequency of your choice: daily, weekly, bi-monthly, etc. | Prospects, customers |
Loyalty email |
| According to a threshold of orders or expenses made | Clients |
Promotional email |
| According to the context of the company | Clients and prospects selected on the basis of specific criteria |
Follow-up email – former customers |
| After a certain period of inaction by a customer | Customers who have not ordered for a specific period or who have not validated the payment of an order |
Transactional Email |
| When opening an account, delivering an order, placing an order, shipping, etc. | New and returning customers |
Email invitation | Publicize an event | 1 to 2 months before the date of the event | Depending on the type of event |
Notification email or “trigger emails” |
| Depending on the customer’s journey (welcome email, reminder in the event of cart abandonment, birthday, etc.) | New customers, loyal customers |
Make a success of your email marketing campaign in 5 steps
Here are the steps to follow for a successful email campaign.
Create a contact list
This is the starting point of any email marketing campaign. In order to ensure the success of your campaign, it is preferable to create your base of prospects.
To do this, you must capture their email addresses in compliance with the GDPR (General Privacy Protection Regulation). This is called opt-in. In the field of emailing, this means that the prospect has freely consented to give you his email address and thus to receive your promotional emails.
Note, however, that it is legal to prospect professionals without their consent. Only the sending of promotional emails to individuals without their consent is reprehensible under the GDPR.
To do this, you must create a registration form, or a landing page. It is therefore by completing it that the prospect leaves you his email address. The form has a dual function:
Collect the email addresses of your users;
Make sure that the contacts concerned are qualified (that they show a real interest in your company).
Your KPIs will therefore only be better:
Deliverability;
The opening rate ;
Click rate;
Unsubscribe rate;
Etc.
Work on the subject of your emails
Once the contact list has been created, you must now work on the content of your emails. And even, before thinking about the content strictly speaking, working on the object is essential. According to some studies , it would influence the open rate by around 50%.
This is what the recipient will see first in preview in their inbox. A well-written subject line that is attractive enough will make the recipient want to open the email.
Here are 3 tips for writing your object well:
A short text of 60 to 70 characters;
Explicit and relevant text consistent with the body of the email. The objective is to capture the attention of the Internet user without lying to him.
Use numbers, superlatives or emoticons. Items that contain it are more likely to be opened. Including a notion of urgency is also a good idea.
Examples of email subject lines
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Send emails at the best time
When it comes to email marketing, timing is also an important parameter. So, according to a study by autoresponder Customer.io , Mondays are generally best avoided. Returning from the weekend, Internet users often have their inboxes full and therefore only open what is strictly necessary. Your email may therefore be ignored. Same thing for Fridays: we can’t wait to leave for the weekend, we’re careless.
Tuesdays and Thursdays are the days when we observe the best opening rates. However, it all depends on your offer.
In order, Tuesday is the day with the highest open rate, next is Thursday, then Wednesday.
The study also shows that the best click-through rates are obtained when emails are sent in the afternoon.
Think about the call-to-action
Also called CTA, the call-to-action is a button that encourages the reader to perform a given action. It’s good to get your email opened, it’s even better if the reader takes the action you want them to take:
Registration for an event;
A demo to your product;
A sale ;
Etc.
The call-to-action button is used to clearly ask your reader to perform this action.
For example, when people are on the page where we present our email outreach tool, we offer to book a demo.
“Register”, “Add to cart”, “Buy now” are therefore all examples of CTA buttons. Do not hesitate to customize it according to your objectives.
The reader must therefore click on the CTA button. This is what the click-through rate, one of the key performance indicators of your email campaign, measures.
Analyze the results
Measuring and analyzing the performance of your emailing campaign is essential in order to optimize its impact. It is almost impossible to create the perfect email on the first try. The best results are achieved through experimentation and adjustment.
To analyze your results, you must take into account the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) or performance indicators. Here are the main ones:
The deliverability rate. This indicates the ratio of emails actually reaching the recipients’ mailbox compared to the number of emails sent. This indicator is a guarantee of performance because it allows you to measure the quality of your contact list. Your reputation is therefore at stake because a low deliverability rate increases the chances that your next emails will end up in spam.
The open rate. This is the percentage of emails actually opened by their recipient. It allows you to check the relevance and attractiveness of your email subject but also to measure your reputation as an advertiser. An email from a poorly reputable advertiser will be less likely to be opened.
The click rate: This is the percentage of emails having obtained a click in relation to the number of emails delivered. It is the effectiveness of your CTA that is measured here.
The responsiveness rate. It is the ratio of clicks obtained in relation to the number of emails opened. It allows you to gauge the relevance of your message, and therefore of the very content of your email.
Churn rate. This is the number of unsubscribes compared to the number of emails delivered. It is therefore the general effectiveness of your campaign that is put in the balance here.
The analysis of these indicators should allow you to review the failing points of your emailing strategy in order to improve them.
Successful B2B prospecting emailing
B2B prospecting emailing has its own rules. Here are our tips for not making mistakes:
Target your prospects well
Targeting is an essential step in any emailing campaign. This is a condition for the effectiveness of your actions. Targeting means knowing who you are talking to, so it is the possibility of being able to personalize your message for maximum impact.
Targeting also means being able to anticipate the needs and possible objections of your prospect base. Similarly, the sector of activity, turnover, fundraising, moving, recruitment, etc. are all criteria that you can use to refine your targeting.
Also remember to check the email addresses of your database . Sending emails to fake addresses negatively affects your reputation and reduces your deliverability.
Heal the object
Like “classic” email marketing, the subject line is what your prospect will see first in your email.
You have to capture his attention directly to convince him to open it.
The real challenge here is to distinguish yourself from the thousands of prospecting emails that fall into your prospect’s professional mailbox. Your message must not be confused with automatic messages.
The subject of your email should therefore be:
Short and precise. It should be straight to the point and give a taste of the content of the email body.
Attractive in order to arouse the curiosity of the prospect while making sure not to disappoint him in the body of the text;
Personalized. Personalization improves click-through rate by 14% and conversion rate by 10%.
Personalize emails as much as possible
We can never tell you enough: the more your emails are personalized, the more their chances of being opened increase. This rule prevails in B2C as in B2B. Moreover, according to a study by Aberdeen (a research firm), personalization can increase the click-through rate in B2B prospecting emails by 14%.
There are several ways to personalize your emails:
Include personal information about the recipient like title, name or company name, etc.
Sign your email;
Add custom images and GIFs, etc.
Here is an example of an image to customize with LeadIn :
Relaunch your base
Few prospects are seduced by your first email. It is for this reason that you should not hesitate to follow up with a prospect after x time. A study by the Woodpecker tool shows, for example, that a follow-up email should increase the response rate from 9 to 13%. This, however, depends on how the leads are targeted and the industry.
If your respect did not react the first time, it is relevant to relaunch it after 2 or 3 days without a response.
There are 2 types of follow-up email:
The reminder. This involves trying a new approach to obtain responses from some of the prospects who did not react to the first email;
Additional information. This is content intended to bring value to prospects, while posing as an expert in your field and offering your solutions.
Click here to discover our automated sequences for your business for free.
In conclusion, emailing is a great tool that has been used since the 1980s. It is now more efficient than ever. If you want to start your B2B prospecting by email now, don’t wait any longer and try LeadIn, the first cold emailing tool .