Questions for OgilvyOne’s E-Mail Marketing Director
As promised, Jeanniey Mullen answers readers’ tough e-mail questions.
As promised, Jeanniey Mullen answers readers’ tough e-mail questions.
Over the past two weeks, we received an influx of insightful, intriguing questions for OgilvyOne’s email marketing director, Jeanniey Mullen. The questions proved Mullen’s theory business-to-business (B2B) marketing is a whole different ballgame. Today, she takes a swing at answering some of the toughest queries.
What key elements relating to design, mailing frequency, list size, and so forth should be considered with B2B mailings?
Mullen: Great question! There are four key questions you should answer when designing your B2B email program. These answers will guide your approach:
Strategy is great, but give me some specific benchmarks for opens and clicks.
Mullen: For unique opens, because of the false opens preview panes provide, shoot for 35-55 percent. Out of this assume only 60 percent of this group actually reads the email. Also, expect open rates in general for B2B to decline over the next year, as new Outlook versions will eliminate the false open rate readings.
Clicks are totally dependent on the mailing type. In general, 8-11 percent is a good goal.
I have no list; and my niche market is small. How do I build an email list?
Mullen:This is a tough question without more specifics, so the answer is a bit general: establish trust. I’ve seen two channels work the best in this scenario.
One approach is to try advertorials in targeted, popular, third-party email newsletters. These may be a bit expensive, but they’re worth it if your target audience is very niche. People who read these publications on a regular basis trust the content. Working with one of these partners often helps you break through the trust barrier.
The second approach is to offer incentives to your sales force to get them to capture and share prospect info with you. Often, the sales team has approval to message to the best leads but is hesitant to share this info with the marketing staff. Building trust with this group can go a long way.
Want more email marketing information? ClickZ E-Mail Reference is an archive of all our email columns, organized by topic.