Earlier this year, UpCity conducted a survey of 300 marketing professionals to explore the role and effectiveness of email marketing for small- to medium-sized businesses. As a follow-up, we felt it was important to our community of B2B service providers and their customers that we dig deeper into these survey results, and allow them to weigh in on our findings.
For this follow-up article, we reached out to our community of digital marketing experts to ask them about the following topics that we originally covered in our email marketing survey report:
- The most effective email cadence for small businesses
- SMBs’ most common email marketing campaign goals
- Challenges that SMBs face in executing effective email marketing
Breaking down UpCity’s Email Marketing Survey Findings
Email marketing is a curiosity in modern marketing. Despite the technical components of SEO and ranking on SERPs that are associated with digital marketing, few marketing strategies reach customers at such a personal level as email. The ability to make such a personal connection with leads and customers is what many marketing experts point to when explaining just how email campaigns continue to generate massive return on investment (ROI).
Our survey findings strongly support the efficacy of email as a marketing tactic, with 75% of respondents claiming that email marketing is moderately or very effective. But that doesn’t mean that email marketing isn’t without challenges.
In the next section, we’re going to explore the major goals and challenges that surfaced in our email marketing survey to allow our community of experts to offer up their own best practices for accomplishing those goals and responding to those challenges.
Our survey found that ⅔ of SMBs send email marketing messages on either a daily or weekly basis. Do you think that this is still the best cadence?
Because email marketing uses a channel of communication that consumers go to great lengths to protect, it’s important for marketers to create campaigns that respect that space. One of those factors is how often emails should be sent to customers. A full two-thirds of our survey respondents advocated for emails to be sent either daily (32%) or weekly (33%).
While this sentiment is mirrored by many B2B small business owners across the UpCity Marketplace, the more prevalent guidance we received when we asked our experts about the best cadence for email distribution is that it depends on what the metrics indicated.
“SMB marketers should rely on their first-party data to guide their sending cadence. If they have already found consistent success in sending email marketing messages on a daily or weekly basis, then it is safe to assume that their audience is receptive to that schedule. But if engagement is trending downwards, it could be an indicator that campaigns need to be sent less frequently.” —Ashley Ismailovski, Director of Email Marketing, SmartSites
Ashley went on to share that using audience segmentation around targeted demographics is another great way to establish the right cadence in your email marketing campaigns.
“Many brands are utilizing customer segments to deliver daily or weekly content to their subscribers without exhausting their recipients. In this way, brands can send a multitude of different marketing messages each week, but only serve the most relevant content to each subscriber as opposed to sending every campaign to all users on their list.” —Ashley Ismailovski, Director of Email Marketing, SmartSites
Cadence should also be determined by the specific industry and the needs of those consumers.
“I strongly believe that for small businesses selling mass-market products, it’s essential to engage with various segments of their target market daily. This practice broadens their reach, connecting with more potential customers. Additionally, by maintaining consistent communication, these businesses enhance their brand recall, increasing the likelihood of being remembered by their audience. This strategy is not only logical but also efficient in cultivating a wide and aware consumer base.” —Valerie Nova, Founder & Art Director, Ubunzo
Several respondents from the community reminded us that, while different types of consumers might require different cadences, the ultimate goal of every campaign is to strengthen the relationship with the customer, grow trust, and establish brand expertise and awareness.
“Sales and outreach is all about creating top-of-mind awareness. If your prospects are cold or even if they are warm prospects, you will still have to warm them up more to get them to convert. By having a repetitive, consistent email marketing outreach campaign, you can create this top-of-mind awareness. Depending on the industry, daily emails can be helpful, but for most industries, weekly emails seem to be the most effective without overwhelming your prospect base.” —Jarrod Mason, Founder, YouWho Digital
Attracting new customers, increasing brand awareness, and introducing new products or services were the three biggest goals of email marketing outreach according to our survey. What is the primary goal of your email marketing outreach?
The three primary email marketing goals touted by respondents to our UpCity survey earlier this year point to core growth principles every brand must embrace. Attracting new customers requires increased brand awareness, and this can often only be achieved by educating consumers more effectively about the products and services your company offers.
Our B2B service providers brought several different perspectives to this conversation. For example, while attracting new customers is important, several pointed out that leads aren’t sales, and it’s more important to use email marketing as a method for increasing conversions.
“The primary goal for our business, and all of our clients, is conversions. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters. Building a list of new prospects is great, but if the email campaign isn’t converting them into customers, what’s the point? If I introduce a new product but nobody buys it, the campaign is useless. We don’t perform any email campaigns that aren’t geared towards conversions at the end of the day. The path to those conversions just might change a bit depending on the campaign.” —Devon Gosline, Head of SEO, Noved Solutions
Improved customer relationships and increased levels of brand trust over time are other key benefits of email marketing campaigns. This ensures that customers will continue their journey through your established sales funnel towards the conversion process, as well as improve future retention rates and the potential for growth.
By delivering high-quality emails, your team’s efforts could inspire your email recipients to share with potential new subscribers.
“For our marketing agency, the primary goal of email marketing is to nurture our clients. We know that the subscribers to our email list are potential clients, now we just need to convince them that we know what we are talking about and they should utilize our services if the need arises. We are building trust via email to move the prospect further down the sales funnel.” —Robb Fahrion, Partner and Co-Founder, Flying V Group
Our community of B2B business owners reminded us that email is an extremely powerful and versatile tool that can be used at multiple stages throughout other campaigns to accomplish different goals, and that versatility should be at the core of every campaign you launch.
“We use email as a tactic in different stages of our marketing process. For generating leads, cold email outreach can provide new appointments and opportunities. For keeping current leads close to our brand, email can build a lot of trust and loyalty. We see email as a companion to the rest of our marketing channels rather than a separate arm of our strategy.” —Vlad Herescu, Founder, Mauve
Our survey found that marketers struggle most with finding the right email marketing tool or service provider. What tips do you have for solving this challenge?
The general consensus across the digital marketing community is that the average ROI of email in 2023 clocks in at around $36 per dollar spent[1]. Despite this massive potential return, email marketing isn’t without its challenges.
In our survey, respondents pointed to finding the right email automation platforms, email marketing tools, or email marketing service provider to support their marketing strategy as one of the biggest challenges they face.
Because many software tools, including those for email marketing, are offered as a service (SaaS), small businesses have the luxury of leveraging trials and demos to test out the tools they are interested in. Some tools even provide an initial free plan or low-cost option, which allows you to build your list over time and ramp up your business organically so that your costs will only increase with growth in your business.
“Test free trials! One of the most important things for SMBs who handle email marketing in-house is command of a tool. For every tool with a counterintuitive, jumbled user interface, there are five that have super-easy-to-follow processes that make email marketing a pleasure, not a chore.” —Nick Gaffney, Director of Digital Strategy, Austin Williams
Sometimes, a tool isn’t the right answer for your business’s marketing needs. You may not have the staff or the skills in-house necessary to support the integration of a new software solution. That’s where outsourcing to an email service provider can be a great alternative.
“Not every solution is one-size-fits-all. The choice of the tool also depends on your technical expertise in-house. Handling email best practices, such as DKIM, SPF, DMARC, and domain rotation, can get technically intricate. If your team has the tech chops, great! If not, you’ll want to look for a service provider that can either simplify these tasks or handle them for you.” —Megan Killion, Chief Consultant, MKC Agency
We’ve written in the past about industry-specific or business process-specific software tools and best practices for integrating new tools into your technology stack. One of the tenants of these discussions is that you should always have a plan and a strategy in place before bringing new technology into the mix. This ensures that you’re using the right software and that you’re not bleeding resources by paying for unnecessary functionality.
“I think it’s best to start simple if you’re just dipping your toes into email marketing. Also, the CRM you use is the right CRM. We got stuck trying to find the right tool when in reality, we just needed to start writing and sending emails. The right tool won’t help if you don’t have a strategy first.” —Bill Kearney, Founder and CEO, LightShift Video
Marketers also struggle with getting recipients to engage with their emails. What tips do you have for solving this challenge?
Boosting customer engagement with emails is an extremely challenging undertaking. Customers are naturally protective of their inbox, and anything that appears to be too sales-focused or irrelevant is liable to get deleted immediately—or worse—banished to the spam folder along with any other future messages from your domain.
If your email is poorly timed or crafted, you also run the risk of causing recipients on your email list to unsubscribe, diminishing your overall marketing reach. The need to improve click-through rates and open rates is crucial for email to improve lead generation and conversion rates.
Retargeting is a solid marketing tactic that automatically follows up with customers once certain criteria are triggered, and this tactic can result in up to a 43% boost in conversions[2]. Email marketing platforms often offer retargeting as a feature.
“I encourage finding an email platform that supports retargeting. This will allow you to resend an email campaign only to those who have not opened it. This increases your open, reply, and click rates without spamming those who already opened.” —Nick Fernandez, Founder, Upsway Marketing
An overall increase in cyberattacks has computer users generally being much more cautious with the technology they use everyday. Email is no exception.
Instead of integrating links into CTA buttons and other blind navigation elements, our community suggests being very transparent with your hyperlinking to give users a degree of trust and invite them to click on links they might have otherwise skipped. The call to action (CTA) is the key to everything in an effective email.
“I use hyperlinks inside emails to generate clicks and I have found they get more clicks than buttons. People also tend to click on interesting graphics. To get more people to reply to emails I ask them directly in the copy to respond. Including a memorable question and asking readers to reply to the email with their answer is a fun way to do it as well. To improve open rates consider having a witty subject line and preview text combination. Using emojis in email subject lines can also increase open rates.” —Nicole Denson, Marketing Manager, Big Leap
Our community suggests that you use the data you have at hand from previous campaigns and consumer activities on your social media channels to your advantage. For example, you can use this data to gain an understanding of when your readers and recipients are most likely to be receptive to and engage with your marketing efforts.
You can also use A/B testing in combination with your engagement data to determine what email content your recipients are engaging with most and start focusing your efforts on delivering more of that type of content.
“For us, it’s understanding who we are emailing and where/when they might consume our content. We have always felt that good, timely content will lead to the highest open rates.” —Eric Madden, President, Astute Technology Management
Finally, it’s important that your marketing team is able to execute the basics of email marketing and that they understand what works visually in the medium, so as to maximize deliverability.
“A catchy subject line definitely helps with opening messages. Once your target audience opens the email, however, the rest of the structure has to be sound and well-designed to get them to then engage with your email.” —Kunal Desai, CEO, Branding And Promo
Work with experts to establish an effective email marketing strategy
While email marketing is an absolute must in any modern marketing strategy, the way you leverage email will depend entirely upon your industry and the services and products you offer your clients. You might need to distribute email newsletters or promotional emails on a regular basis. Or you might manage a number of different business channels requiring a host of email templates geared for different audiences.
Whatever your niche and need, you stand to benefit from a team of marketing professionals with the know-how to craft and execute cost-effective email marketing campaigns designed to maximize your return on investment and grow your business.
If you don’t have the team in-house, take a look at the UpCity Marketplace for a highly rated email marketing expert ready to help you take your next campaign to the next level.
Sources
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- What is the Average Email Marketing ROI?, Constant Contact
- Top 5 Retargeting Statistics You Should Know [2023] – Woosuite, AOV Up