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Breaking Through the Corporate Email Box

Last week’s Fast Company article on how to manage your corporate inbox carried a headline, “Email is Dead.” Wow, did that get my gander up! And get me clicking through, which was the point, I suppose.

In fact, the headline is misleading and not at all what the article reports. Email isn’t dead at all in the corporate environment—in fact, it’s so essential and powerful that many corporations are investing time and resources training employees how to use email more effectively. For instance, the EEC has recommended not sending gratuitous “thank you” emails to help reduce the flow of email.

The lesson for email marketers is that B2B subscribers have a LOT going on in their inbox. Our marketing messages have to break through not just the clutter of other marketers, but messages from the CEO, the boss, the team...all of which are likely a lot more urgent and important to the reader.

Try a quick test on your own B2B marketing emails—what chance do you have for an open or response when you consider your message strategy in context of a very crowded inbox and a day that has fewer hours than project deadlines.

Is the subject line about how the subscriber will benefit? Is there urgency? Is the topic a description of your products or is it about how they benefit the reader? Would your messages break through your own inbox clutter? Think like your customer or prospect—and answer that question again. This is why the most successful B2B marketing emails are not long newsletters or product announcements, but succinct, cogent, relevant (a.k.a.: targeted) offers for training, whitepapers or tools that help readers be more productive, intelligent, capable or impressive to their superiors.

Ensure that B2B marketing messages are truly subscriber-centric, and you’ll have a much better chance of breaking through.

—Stephanie Miller

Posted on July 2, 2007 10:11 AM | Permalink

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Comments (1)

denise cox:

hi stephannie... great post!

some other email handling habits that i think apply to b2b subscribers and will impact senders:

* recipients set aside all the i-do-want-to-read-these emails that they're subscribed to and read them later: sometimes days or weeks later. i think this contributes to a longer opening tail then in B2C, and marketers should look at stats long after the 24-72 hour window. it also takes the pressure off marketers from having to always create 'urgency' in subject lines; instead highlighting how relevant and useful the information inside will be when the reader gets time to look at it. this of course doesn't apply if your email is time sensitive! then it's important to work on emphasising immediate opens.

* today the storage space for email is a lot less of an issue - this is particularly relevant in web-based accounts, people aren't always performing triage to 'save space'. because of this - and the strong search functionality in email software - i believe people have acquired a habit of saving emails to search through and find specific items/ products/ services at a later date (and often to print out and bring to a meeting). this means email newsletters and communications have a much longer shelf life then the previous read or delete era.

sincerely,
denise

Posted by denise cox | July 11, 2007 7:47 AM

Posted on July 11, 2007 07:47

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the voices of email

The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Elie Ashery is the president and CEO of Gold Lasso, and is responsible for the company’s vision and strategy execution. Before joining Gold Lasso, he co-founded Newsletters.com in 1997, selling it to The Tribune Cos. in 2000. He then worked for IncenSoft, focusing on email marketing while there. Read more.

Amy Bills is the senior manager of field marketing at lead optimization company Bulldog Solutions. She is responsible for lead generation and the go-to-market execution of Bulldog's new products and initiatives. Amy was previously the editorial team leader of Freescale Semiconductor’s internal creative agency and a senior editor at Hoover’s Online. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Spencer Kollas is the director of delivery services at StrongMail, helping maximize customers’ email deliverability rates. He was previously director of deliverability services for Premiere Global Services. Spencer is an active member in the Email Sender & Provider Coalition, Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group, the Anti-Phishing Work Group and, of course, the eec. Read more.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Erick Mott is the director of marketing and corporate communications for Habeas, the leader in email reputation management services. He has a rich background in marketing and communications strategy and execution for such companies as Nokia, MarkMonitor, GlobalFluency, Cisco Systems, Creator Connection, Sun Microsystems, Philips NV, Elm Products and CBS Television. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the Email Experiene Council's founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

Jeremy Swift is director of client relations for email service provider BlueHornet. He helped form BlueHornet’s founding team in 2000 and has been responsible for client services and marketing strategy since the company’s inception. Jeremy is known for his ability to articulate technical information in ways that clearly resonate with today’s online marketer.

DJ Waldow is an account manager at Bronto Software. He works with Bronto’s largest clients to help them achieve and surpass their marketing goals. An active member of the email marketing community, DJ posts regularly on the Email Marketer’s Club, publishes a bi-weekly email marketing best practices newsletter, and films BrontoFire.

Chad White is the Email Experience Council’s director of retail insights and editor-at-large. He founded and is the author of the Retail Email Blog, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.