Email, once considered dead, is the savvy marketer’s most beloved tool – the workhorse of the marketing arsenal.
Consider, the Direct Marketing Association says the ROI on email marketing averages 4300%. It calls email “the most prolific tool for today’s data-driven marketer.” Various reports give email more credit for conversion and engagement than social media, direct mail, and other marketing efforts – and it is often less expensive.
There is endless advice for email marketers to improve their campaigns, from personalization and automation to A/B testing, being mobile friendly, and, perhaps most importantly, providing value.
Add to that advice: using trusted third-party resources who can actually reach your target audience(s).
Even the most well-resourced of companies can struggle to maintain and grow an impressive database of customers and prospects. Complementing an organization’s internal list with a third-party’s is a great way to extend reach and target people the organization has not yet encountered. For smaller organizations, it may be the only way.
Unlike list rentals, in which the marketing organization sends the email itself, third-parties send the email on the marketer’s behalf. This can work to the marketer’s advantage if the third party has a strong reputation with the intended recipients.
Opt-in is critical
To determine that you’re working with the right third party, one important criterion is the quality of its list. Make sure its recipients have opted in to receive emails, e-newsletters, and such from them. In addition, find out how often they clean up their database and re-engage with their subscribers to update areas of interest.
Unless its database is comprised of people who are expressly interested in hearing from them, the third party is not going to be able to deliver the opens and clickthroughs that you need to engage your prospects.
Demographics
Who is on your third party’s list? Are they targeting the industry or industry segments you need to reach? What are the job titles or responsibilities, and what is their involvement in the buying decision? Good third-party resources should be able to provide detailed demographics, from employer type to global reach.
Measurement
Ask how emails are measured. Positive engagement metrics include:
- Opens – not just received
- Clicks – did they select links within your email
- “Not Spam” data – if subscribers select “This is not spam” links within the email
- Saving email – if subscribers move the email to a folder
- Forwarding email – did the recipient feel it was worthy of a pass-along to a colleague?
Negative engagement metrics include:
- Unsubscribes – the rate at which recipients unsubscribe or otherwise reduce their engagement with your emails
- Spam rate – the number of subscribers who mark your emails as spam
- Delete without opening – counting instant or repeat deletes
Knowledgeable Service
Here is where how the third party does things is as important as what they do. If you only wanted a list, you could rent one. But when working with a third party to communicate with your audience via email, you want their proven experience to guide you.
Good third-party resources can service of a range of needs to fill gaps in your own abilities. That means they can:
- Create the email from information and images provided
- Provide templates that you populate
- Create custom, unique emails
- Share what works and doesn’t work, based on experience
- Provide feedback to improve your email content
- Design templated and custom emails that mirror your branding
Expertise and service can also help you determine email frequency – how often to send so that you engage, not inundate, your audience. Third-party email resources should have standards for frequency and mechanisms to enforce it so their opt-in readership does not become annoyed and decide to opt out.
Extra Options
In addition to sending emails, third-party providers should have options too –
- A/B testing to determine what works best before you conduct an entire campaign
- Multi-touch or “drip” email campaigns to re-engage prospects depending on previous action (or inaction)
- E-newsletters that cover topics of interest to your target audience
Post-Send
Once they’ve hit send, the third-party resource’s job is not over. Look for a high quality, detailed report on the metrics you’ve agreed to. A good partner will also share their experience to provide recommendations, if necessary, for improvement – this is where an investment in A/B testing can make a difference.
Preparing Effective Emails
Once you’ve selected a third-party provider to send emails on your behalf, it’s time to consider what makes for a more effective email. Here are some basic recommendations to get going:
- Subject lines should be compelling, creating a sense of urgency or intrigue or a willingness to act – just don’t use an exclamation point
- The call-to-action (CTA) within the email should be clear, compelling, and prominently located so it is easy to find and what to do
- Use hyperlinks to drive recipients to a landing page; hyperlink images too
- Balance images and text – 100 percent image emails are knowns as spam triggers
- Keep it brief and use bullet points; often times 100 words is all that’s needed (if you have good CTAs that move recipients further down the funnel)
- Place your featured content within the top 300 pixels of the email (and a good third-party email resource will help you understand this)
- Avoid spam trigger words like free, win, discount, offer, prize, buy, order, best, rate, trial, give-away
Email and its peer, the e-newsletter, are excellent tools to inform and educate an audience. They can be used to
- raise brand awareness and consideration
- promote new products and services or new uses for a product
- announce new events likes webinars and presentations
- share new blog posts and video
- and so much more
To succeed, however, the content must be valuable to your audience, and it must reach your target. Biocompare offers email blast and eNewsletter offerings that can reach 50,000 and 58,000 opt-in subscribers, respectively. Topical eNewsletters cover a dozen subjects, from cancer to drug discovery to immunology and proteomics. Emails can be segmented into far more niche categories – among those currently drawing the most interest are molecular biology, general laboratory equipment, antibodies, cell and tissue culture, cell biology, and protein expression. Emerging topics like translational research and next-generation sequencing are also covered.
For assistance reaching Biocompare’s audience of highly qualified, highly engaged researchers and scientists, contact your sales representative or check out our media kit. We are a third-party email resource that can deliver the audience you want to reach, and help you to engage them in a way that promotes action.