Are you getting the best possible results from your email marketing? Testing several variables (such as timing, subject line, email “from” name) is a great way to find the mix that reaches your audience most effectively.

However, it is important to keep a few best practices in mind when variable testing to ensure the results are valid. Here are our recommendations to make sure you get accurate data you can use to optimize your email campaigns:

Test One Variable at a Time: When it comes to testing emails, it is important that you only test one variable at a time so that you can get an accurate understanding of how the variable affected your email performance. For example, you can test the “from” name of your email, and gain insight into which your audience responds best to by analyzing the open rates. Once you have identified the top performing “from” name, you can apply it to future emails and in the next email test a new variable, for example the subject line. By limiting each test to one variable, you will be able to accurately assess the results of your test and fully understand how simple changes can affect your email performance.

Have a Large Enough Test Group: In order for your test to be accurate, you must have a large enough sample size. For email variable testing, a sample size of 500 is a little on the low side but still a good place to start. The larger your sample size, the more likely your results will be statistically accurate. If you don’t have enough members in your database, the results you may be inaccurate and send your email marketing strategies in the wrong direction.

Randomly Select Members of Your Test Groups: When splitting up your recipient list for variable testing, do so randomly. If using an email marketing platform, it is likely it will have a random list generator function. If, on the other hand, you need to manually select members, make sure you sort them in a way that it is truly random. For example, it is not recommended that you sort by company name or titles, as you are likely to have too many similar contacts in each list. However, if you sort by email address or last name, you are more likely to have a random sample.

Track and Analyze Results: It is important to monitor what variables you have tested and how they have changed your email marketing results. To do this, it is recommended that you keep a log of the variables you have tested for each campaign, the results you saw and any observations you have made along the way. Doing this will help you keep track of what you have tested and provide great insight into what you should test to continuously improve results.

Regular testing is critical, as the industry changes frequently. By following the steps above, you will ensure that your email campaigns are getting the greatest ROI for your marketing team. Read more about email testing in this article.

Need help with your email marketing strategy? Contact Launch today! Be sure to like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest B2B marketing tips and tricks.

Here at Launch Marketing we strive to continually share our B2B marketing expertise through regular blog postings and articles on our website. Below are Launch Marketing’s ten most popular B2B marketing resources, covering various B2B marketing topics such as email marketing, social media and lead generation.

1. A Client’s Bill of Rights: Ten Key Points to Consider When Selecting a Marketing Firm
   Once you’ve identified the need for a marketing firm, how do you decide which firm to engage with? There are several qualities that you should look for, and this article lists the top 10 to consider when evaluating a firm.

2. Thinking Outside the (Mail)box: Insightful Tips for Creating Better Emails
   Since email is an essential aspect of many B2B marketing campaigns, it is important to ensure that you are deriving the greatest value from your email campaigns. Read our blog post for tips and takeaways we learned while attending the 2012 Marketo user conference.

3. 4 Best Practices for Google AdWords
   While Google AdWords is a useful marketing tactic for many companies, successful campaigns take an extensive amount of knowledge and effort. Read our blog post to learn some of the best practices we utilize in AdWords campaign management.

4. Back To Basics: Spotting Common Grammar and Punctuation Mistakes in Your Copy
   There are a few common grammar and punctuation mistakes that occur frequently in marketing copy. Understanding how to avoid these mistakes is essential in order to present a professional image. This article lists a few of the mistakes we come across most often, as well as ways to avoid them.

5. Utilizing Infographics to Break Through the Chatter
   Images are becoming an increasingly popular avenue for content marketing, and infographics specifically have increased in popularity recently. Our article lists several best practices to ensure that you are deriving the greatest marketing value from your infographics.

6. Extend Your Reach: Use a LinkedIn Company Page to Increase Exposure
   LinkedIn continues to grow in usage and has expanded beyond just a way to connect with your personal network. This article covers the capabilities of company pages on LinkedIn as well as several tips to maximize their impact.

7. Timeline for Brands: What’s Changing and Best Practices
   When Facebook introduced Timeline for Company pages, there were many changes that occurred. Read our blog post for tips on how to make the most of these changes and drive results from your company’s Facebook page.

8. Fourth Quarter Fire Up: The Importance of End of Year Marketing
   During the last few months of the year, it is important to continue your marketing efforts in order to derive even greater results from your campaigns. This article lists the top 3 reasons why this is important and the best ways to effectively utilize your remaining marketing budget.

9. Send a Package, Capture Attention: Generating Qualified Leads with Three Dimensional Campaigns
   To stand out from the crowded marketplace, make sure that your marketing materials are impactful. One way to catch prospects’ attention is by utilizing a three-dimensional marketing campaign. Read our article to learn more about the benefits and components of effective three-dimensional campaigns.

10. The Most Critical 50% Of Event Marketing: 4 Tips to Maximize Event Impact
    Successful B2B events require a great deal of planning and preparation prior to the event. However, the activities that occur after an event are just as important. This article highlights several best practices to follow after an event in order to maximize your lead generation results.

Looking for more B2B marketing resources? Visit the resource center on our website to read all of our blogs and articles, and be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest B2B marketing tips and trends.

Photo by: Robin~All Things Heart and Home

While marketing automation can be a useful tool, it can be easy to focus on the “automation” aspect and forget about the “marketing” part. To be successful, marketing automation requires more than setting up the system to automate actions. While marketing automation helps to automate the process, you will still have to make the decisions as to the best steps to take, based on the marketing knowledge you already have. Specifically, there are four marketing fundamentals that must be remembered during a marketing automation implementation.

1. Content

In order for people to respond to your sales messages, you need to offer them something of value. Compelling, relevant content, as opposed to traditional, “salesy” materials, helps to build a sense of trust with your brand, puts prospects at ease and increases the likelihood that they will pay attention to your messages.

For content to be successful, it is important to make sure that it is highly targeted to your prospects’ interests. By targeting your content to prospects’ industry, job function or other factors, you increase the likelihood that they will find value from it. According to research firm MarketingSherpa 82% of prospects say content targeted to their specific industry is more valuable and 67% say content targeted to their job function is more valuable.

2. Timing

It is essential to ensure that the timing of your touches are at the optimal frequency, reaching prospects enough to stay top-of-mind but not annoying or overwhelming them by reaching them too often. This balance varies, and it is up to you to determine if you need to make adjustments based on key metrics such as bounce and unsubscribe rates.

Determining the best day and time of day to reach your specific audience is also important. Some segments may be more apt to read your emails first thing in the morning, while other may do so around lunchtime. Uncovering the optimal day and time of day can improve the results of your marketing significantly.

3. Segmentation

Much like you (hopefully) segment your audience for other marketing tactics, segmenting your audience is vital for success using marketing automation. As discussed previously, most prospects agree that they want to receive content that is targeted to their interests. In order to do so, it is important that you are segmenting your audience into enough groups that you are able to reach them with relevant messages.

4. Testing

Just like all other marketing campaigns, in order to continue to improve the results of a marketing automation campaign, it is important to continually test aspects of the campaign. The three fundamentals discussed above are all aspects of a campaign that can (and should) be tested.

Every audience will have their own nuances and preferences. While it is important to go into an implementation while keeping in mind best practices, you never know if you may be able to achieve greater results unless you are testing.

As you can see, marketing automation is not as different from traditional marketing as you may think. You still have to continually analyze the results you see and remain involved in the overall strategy of an implementation. By integrating your existing marketing knowledge, it is possible to improve the results of a marketing automation implementation drastically.

Read more about our marketing automation consulting packages and be sure to follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to stay up to date with our insider B2B marketing tips.

Photo via stevendepolo

So, when was the last time you thought about your email marketing?  A week?  A month?  Heaven forbid – a year?

No matter how top of mind your email marketing is (or isn’t), it’s never a bad idea to take a moment to evaluate how well it’s performing. If your emails aren’t doing as well as you’d like, you may be guilty of an email blunder or two. Fortunately, these are pretty easy to fix – read on for a breakdown on our top email “oops.”

Make it Relevant
A while back Marketing Sherpa did a survey that asked prospects what they thought the biggest problems were with the emails they received on products and services. Fifty-six percent said the content was not relevant or specific to their focus/role. This is a huge failing that we see over and over in email marketing.

It’s essential to consider your audience when composing an email. At a minimum you should be segmenting your list (industry, product focus, and role are all good places to start) and tailoring your copy to these classifications.

Review your emails to see if you’re talking about your company too much. Your content should be talking about something that is of interest to a prospective buyer, and while you may think all they want to hear about is how great your company/product/services is, that’s not always the case. Reserve the sales pitch for later when they’ve indicated they’re interested in buying what you have to offer.  Use a conversational tone and personalize wherever you can.

Keep it Short and Sweet
A cardinal sin is forgetting to keep your email short and sweet. If you’re lucky enough that the subject line catches someone’s attention, you can be sure that you only have seconds to keep it. That means you need to get to the point, and fast. And, most people skim their emails so be sure to break up the text with subheads or bullets.

Make the Call to Action Count
The Marketing Sherpa survey also revealed that more than 60% of respondents felt the offers being made were not compelling. Taking the time to think through your offer and anticipate what the response or reaction might be is well worth it. Be clear about you want the reader to do and use action-oriented verbs in the call to action like “Download the White Paper Now.”

Limit the call to action to just one offering; more than that and you risk diluting both your message and the action you want someone to take. Lastly, don’t forget to put the call to action as a text link within the email – if you rely on just a button or picture, there’s no guarantee someone will download the image.

Assess the Pace
Great content…check. Compelling call to action…check, check.  But, how often are you sending out emails? If you’re sending one every week or two to the same database, you may have a problem.

The frequency of your emails is just as important as your content and call to actions. Depending upon your business and the content you have to offer, every three weeks or once a month may be the perfect timing – only you will know. One way to assess this is to keep an eye on the number of unsubscribes. If that number is high or trending upward, that’s a sign you are hitting the database too frequently, or not providing relevant content.

And be sure to honor requests to unsubscribe – nothing makes people madder then ignoring them, and then there is that pesky detail that you’re legally required to take them off your list. While you may hate to see them go, you’re better off respecting someone’s wishes to not get your emails. You can always tactfully invite them back (much later).

If you liked this post, check out these for more email marketing best practices:

Thinking Outside the (Mail) Box:  Insightful Tips for Creating Better Emails

Give Me a Sign…Variable Testing Boosts Email Performance

Need help with your email marketing strategy? Contact Launch today! Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to stay up-to-date with B2B marketing tips and trends.