Sending a Business Email that Drives Internet Leads
The goal of sending a business email is to drive internet leads. Regular email blasts are a staple in most business’ marketing strategies, however, they require proper management as well as a few starting guidelines to work the way they were intended. For the most success in your next campaign, be sure to follow the next three criteria during the setup and management of sending a business email.
Step 1 – Clean Up your Email Lists
Before you send out even a single email campaign, do your due diligence to ensure as many of your contact email addresses are not only accurate (spelled correctly), but still active (still able to receive email).
Why is it important that your list be accurate and active? If you use your email service to mail a list that has a significant number of inaccurately spelled emails or emails that are no longer active, sending a business email will results in high hard bounce rates and/ or high SPAM reporting rates. Both high hard bounces and SPAM reports can result in your email account being suspended from sending emails to anyone on your contact lists, even if they received your previous emails with no negative response. In other words, your email service account will be banned from sending from that email service.
Most businesses have to pay for the rights to use their email service providers when sending a business email, and if your account is suspended due to high bounce rates or SPAM reports, you can effectively write off any dollars you have invested in that months email service. Sure, you can cancel your account and set up a new one elsewhere, but wouldn’t it be easier to just test your existing email contact lists effectively the first time around?
That being said, depending on the size of your email list, individual testing of email addresses could be an arduous task. There are several online services, both free and paid that offer list-verification services for bulk email contact lists. Even if you need to pay for an email verification service for your contact list, it is well worth the investment when you consider the alternative.
The following sites are reliable and reasonably priced resources for email list testing:
Step 2 – A/B Test Your Email Subject Lines
Once you know your email contact list is ready to serve as a conduit for sending a business email, it’s time to test your recipients to see what gets them to respond most effectively. Do two months of A/B testing, which means you send one email to half of your email list (A), and another email to the other half of your email list (B) . The only differential in these A/B tested emails will be in the subject line that your email recipients will see in their inbox.
The purpose of this A/B test is to see what kind of email subject garners the highest open rates within your contact list, allowing you to pattern your future email subject lines around the ones that get the most opens from your test. For example:
Email A – 5 Ways to Build your Inbound Lead Generation
Email B – Do you Know How to Increase your Inbound Leads
Watch your email metrics to gauge which email subject line speaks most to your recipients and use it as a guide for future emails.
Step 3 – Include Calls to Action in your Content
Calls to Action are exactly what they’re called. They call your readers to act, whether it be to download a free report, sign up for a webinar or add their email to your email contact list. Be sure to include at least two calls to action in your email content to drive the internet lead potential of your email campaigns.
While sending a business email may be a staple in many businesses marketing strategies, effective internet leads will only follow by using the above criteria.