Right Targets. Right Time. Right Message.

Consider the amount of information the average consumer digests and interacts with on a daily basis – from traditional media, from social media, on their electronic devices, at home, at work, during their daily commute, during their exercise routine.

Websites. Blogs. Emails. News articles. Opinion pieces. Videos. Memes. Texts from friends.

Feels like overload sometimes, right? Like there is too much to process.

HubSpot reports that 40% of email users have at least 50 unread messages in their inbox. As a building materials marketer charged with engaging your key audiences – contractors, architects, designers, dealers, distributors, and other – it only makes sense for you to ask: How do I ensure that my email from my company does not fall into the cracks? How do I avoid squandering an opportunity to engage with a prospect via email and transform them into a customer? Or to solidify a customer’s relationship with my brand?

At first blush, email marketing might seem simple. Create a list, design a few emails, and hit send. That should drive engagement and generate leads, right?

Think again.

To maximize the return on email marketing, you need a carefully crafted, meticulously executed strategy that positions your brand to communicate with existing customers and reach a new audience as well. Follow best practices, and you will unlock an avenue for direct communication with stakeholders to educate, foster relationships, and build brand loyalty.

STEP ONE: Choosing the Right Platform

Choosing an email marketing platform can present you with unlimited options. Your priority should be to choose a platform that includes all the must-have features to meet your marketing goals. Platform selection also depends on the size of your contact list, the resources at your disposal to manage the database, and available budget.

Determine the key requirements for your email marketing program and what technical features and benefits you need to utilize. An ideal platform for most building product manufactures is one where senders can segment emails, customize HTML templates and designs, and analyze metrics on a regular basis. Start by asking yourself these questions:

• How frequently does our brand intend to distribute emails?
• How easy is the platform to use on a daily basis?
• How is the data from the platform integrated with other marketing data?
• How can we monitor results?
• What are the costs associated with the platform?
• What kind of customization is available?

Consider various platform options to see how each will match up against your requirements. HubSpot, a preferred BLD Marketing partner, is an all-in-one marketing, sales, support, and content management solution. HubSpot is the Ideal CRM software for enterprises and larger businesses with an integrated content management system.

STEP TWO: Building and Maintaining a List

An email marketing campaign is only successful if the right audience is on your email list. If your list is not properly segmented and targeted, your success rate will suffer.

Privacy laws are in a state of flux, and as the rules evolve, it may eliminate the ability for a brand to use an email list that has not been organically grown. That means the recipients have opted into your marketing and have agreed to receive emails from you directly. At the same time, many marketers still reach for an inexpensive email list from third-party companies. There is no guarantee you will see a payoff in exchange for your money. If these people never signed up to receive your emails, they likely will not be interested in your brand’s content. You now risk your credibility and place your brand at a high risk for being perceived as spam. According to HubSpot, 59% of Americans say that most emails they receive are not useful to them.

How do you avoid these pitfalls? Create your own list. This will ensure you reach the most applicable audience and avoid your brand distributing to a bad email database.

It may seem intimidating, but it is a worthwhile investment. After you choose a trustworthy platform, you need to entice prospects to sign up for your email list. Naturally, people may be hesitant to willingly add more emails to their overflowing inbox. Consider adding a pop-up call to action (CTA) at the bottom of your website’s landing page that prompts the visitor to provide information after spending a certain amount of time on your website. Integrate a personalized CTA into other marketing efforts such as blogs or social media accounts, including the use of gated content. Gated content helps generate additional information about existing subscribers, converting prospects to leads.

Email database management is certainly not a once-and-done exercise. It requires constant cultivation. Performing regular maintenance on your email lists is key to slowly building a strong database of names and addresses and will ultimately give you a better understanding of your audience. The more reliable your data is, the more personalized your emails can become. The following tips can increase the chances that your emails will avoid the junk folder and your list of recipients will remain engaged:

• Remove invalid email addresses: Whether duplicate addresses, those who have bounced, or simply unsubscribed, make sure these addresses are not negatively impacting your deliverability rates. Some email marketing platforms like HubSpot will automatically remove invalid addresses from the active mailing list before the next emails go out.
• Reengage inactive subscribers: Say you find yourself in a situation where subscribers are not opening your emails and certainly not clicking on your links. Find ways to personalize your campaigns more readily – from customizing the subject line to using second person in the body of the email (I, we, you). Before you remove subscribers, make sure you have done all you can to reconnect with them.
• Opt-In and Out: Ensure your sign-up forms are set up properly. Make sign-ups clear and easy. New contacts are added to the database in real time and have full visibility into the notion that they are now on your list. Just as you make the sign-up process easy, the unsubscribe process should be just as easy. The last thing you want is subscribers who have lost interest and are not engaging with your emails.

STEP THREE: Authoring Content that Resonates

Think of your own personal email accounts. Your inbox is likely bombarded with hundreds of emails every week that you have stopped reading for whatever reason. Chances are the content does not appeal to you or your interests. Or you receive too much email from that company. You have likely unsubscribed, or you have let the unread emails pile up in your inbox. You may also be deleting the emails without even reviewing them.

Creating relevant, compelling content represents a large piece of the puzzle when developing a relationship with your email subscribers. The content you deliver must resonate with their pain points and challenges. It must be relevant to what they are facing in their own business and should point to how you can solve a particular challenge or can offer insight and perspective on an issue that is meaningful to them.

As you curate topics for any email marketing endeavor, it is important to ask one simple yet powerful question: “Why should they care?” Does my audience care about this specific topic that I have selected? How and why is it relevant to them? How is what we do as a building materials brand connected to the topic? Do we have something impactful to offer, and is it readily discernible to the recipients?

Consider these other tips when creating content for emails that will get the reader’s attention and keep it:

• Engaging Subject Line: Subject lines make or break an email’s performance. Write a good one, and you will likely see high open rates. A poor one will lead your email to go right in the trash folder. According to HubSpot Research, 65% of surveyed marketers say that subject lines have the greatest impact on open rates. It is a recipient’s very first impression of the email you have distributed, and you only have a few seconds to make a good impression. Keep subject lines relevant and catchy, but do not mislead readers for greater opens or clicks. Be sure your subject line correlates directly with what you will deliver to the recipient.
• Keep it Concise and Action-Oriented: According to HubSpot, data suggest that the ideal length of a marketing email is between 50 and 125 words, although there are certain situations where longer emails may be better suited. For more educational-based content, longer emails may be necessary. Catchy emails can be great, but make sure it is clear and easy for your reader to decipher. Keep the message brief. Short sentences in active voice serve you well in this instance, and they should entice your recipient to come on a journey with the brand. This means you should avoid telling the entire story in the body of the message. Instead, focus on what you are merchandising in the email, and drive the recipient to take the desired action – to read an article on your blog, to review a case study on your website, to read more on your website about a specific product, to watch a video, to fill out a form, or to contact someone within the organization. Metaphorically, the email is the appetizer. Getting them to click to your digital asset – whether it is a campaign landing page or a website – is the entrée.
• Personalization: According to research from Mailjet, the average person receives 130 emails per day, but only 16 percent of those are relevant. Making sure your emails fall in that window is a key to success. Personalization can be accomplished on several fronts – on the content that is selected, and on the tone of voice used to deliver the message. Be sure to speak directly to customers. By personalizing your email campaigns, you are bound to increase your open and click-through rates. Make your audience feel like you are talking directly to them, and that they are not just another number. Make your brand’s personality known and showcase that human-to-human interaction is at the forefront of your messaging. One way to do this is through account-based marketing, where you segment your database of contacts. You then structure your communication to properly serve each of those audiences. It can come in the form of broad topics that are relevant to the entire database. Or it can be engineered to resonate with a specific target audience such as architects or contractors. It may also be content that is relevant to a specific customer’s profile.
• Consider A/B Testing: Gain a better knowledge of performance across a wide range of metrics. A/B testing allows you to experiment with a different subject line or CTA to see which line resonates with a user. Pick one variable to change and keep the rest of the email the same. Send two different emails to two different sample groups on your email list. The email that gets more clicks is your winner and the one to send to the rest of the list.

STEP FOUR: Finding the Right Rhythm and Timing

Timing is key, and it starts with considering the time of day when an email goes out. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. When is your audience most receptive to open and read your email? Is it first thing in the morning? As soon as you sit down at your desk to start your day?

According to HubSpot, marketing and advertising professionals are experiencing the highest engagement levels between 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 12p.m. to 3 p.m. Twenty-seven percent of U.S marketers reported Tuesday as the day that emails received the highest amount of engagement.

Timing your emails during peak periods can be a great starting place for testing open rates and engagement. However, do not stick to just one time. Experiment with different times and monitor what time is resonating with your readers the best.

Timing considerations stretch beyond when to send the message. Consider relevant events and seasonality when it comes to a campaign’s timing and topics. Seasons, holidays, and industry events can all be key focal points, tapping into a recipient’s top-of-mind considerations. Draw a correlation between what is happening elsewhere in the world and the story you are telling, and your chances of connecting with a recipient increase. Find ways to give a nod to the upcoming holiday, to the season, to the trade show your email recipients may be attending. Get their attention by tapping into what may be happening in their lives at that very moment.

Determining the right cadence for sending emails can also affect the relationship you build with your audience. Are weekly emails to certain prospects the right way to go, and even if they are, is that sustainable? It may make even more strategic sense to consider a bi-weekly or monthly cadence. Send too many emails too close together, and you risk claiming a permanent spot in the “delete” folder. Space emails too far apart, and you lose visibility and connectivity with your recipients. Find a way to strike a healthy balance based on your stated goals, how email marketing fits into your overall marketing strategy, and the stories you have to tell.

If your brand is just beginning, it can be difficult to know where to start. Try out various email cadences to gain a better understanding for what your audience prefers.

STEP 5: Measure, Evaluate, Adapt

When it comes to email marketing, the “set it and forget it” mindset is not enough to drive results. While success might look different for every brand, determining what key performance indicators (KPIs) you want to focus on is essential for understanding your audience, optimizing campaigns, and generating ROI. Consider measuring the following:

• Delivery Rate: For starters, did your intended audience receive your email? If your email is ending up in the spam folder or is not being successfully delivered, what is inside the email is irrelevant.
• Open Rate: This gives an overall rating of how engaged the audience is and what percentage of your list is interacting with your content. A high open rate is a good indicator that your subject line was compelling enough to gain the reader’s interest.
• Click Through Rate (CTR): The click through rate is referred to as the percentage of recipients who click on a link within an email. A low click through rate may be a sign that more personalized and segmented content is a good idea to boost engagement levels.

Build, Engage, Impact

Email marketing is not just hitting the send button. It is about fostering meaningful connections, providing value, and positioning your brand to make a trusted impact.

Think of it this way: You can reach and engage your audience with the click of a button.

It is all about choosing the right platform, building a carefully curated list, consistently creating impactful content that will resonate with your target audience, and hitting send all at the right time.