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In this post, we go through the 10 benefits of List Building for B2B marketers.
Specifically, how to
- Control the attention
- Control the content
- Personalize your approach for better results
- Use segmentation to increase conversion rates
- Find out what works and put it to the test
- Get on top of policy and algorithmic restrictions
- Leverage one channel well
- Ride on the most popular communication channel
- Own your list
- Increase your engagement
Let’s dive in.
#1. Control the attention
Email receives more attention than a Facebook status update or a tweet on Twitter.
The number of people who actually see your posts in their newsfeed has dropped dramatically as a result of recent changes made by Facebook.
Now, in order to reach a significant number of people, you must use promoted posts.
In the case of email, however, things are a little different.
It may not appear so, but people receive less mail than there are tweets and status updates in their newsfeed.
As a result, if you have been successful in convincing them to subscribe to your mailing list, you will have fewer competing messages.
People must do something with their emails, even if it is as simple as clicking the delete button. That’s some involvement compared to what you get, or don’t get, in social media.
Read
- How to Structure the Perfect Email in 2021 | CloudApp Blog
- 100 Email Subject Lines That Work (Examples From Email Marketing Experts Included)
#2. Control the content
You have complete creative control over the content and design of your email communication.
Email has the advantage of being more technically versatile.
With proper formatting, you can include more information in an email without making the user experience too difficult.
In the case of social media sites, you are constrained by the capabilities of the platform that you are using to communicate.
Read: 900+ Free HTML Email Templates & Newsletters
#3. Personalize for better results
Email is more personal than a message from the brand’s Facebook page or a tweet from the brand’s Twitter account.
Messages sent via email can be personalised much more easily than messages sent via social media channels. Because of the nature of social media, personalization may result in one-on-one communication that is not scalable. (Unless, of course, you hire a monkey army.)
A brand’s post in your Facebook newsfeed makes you feel like you are tuning into a television show, replete with one way monologues.
If you put forth some effort, you can make the emails appear more personalised. However, in the case of Facebook’s wall posts, this is simply not possible.
Either you speak to a single individual or you speak to everyone in a more generalised manner.
People believe that when they receive an email, it is specifically addressed to them because of the more personal touch.
Personalization can be automated using tools: 30 website personalization and recommendations software tools
#4. Use segmentation to increase conversion rates
After personalization comes segmentation, which is the next step. Email is much more effective in this regard!
You have complete control over how you slice and dice your mailing list. You now have more information about the actions taken by the subscriber in the past.
You can use information about what emails they open and which links they click to segment subscribers automatically if you have information about what emails they open and which links they click.
Using Facebook will give you some control over your audience in the form of demographic targeting, but it will be difficult to track this down to the specific individual.
With Twitter, you’re flying blind, to put it mildly.
Here’s a practical integration option to consider. Match the people who have joined your social media networks with the people who have signed up for your mailing list.
Then you may be able to incorporate demographic information from Facebook into your email database, bringing you one step closer to implementing a social CRM.
Learn how to use social media channels to build your newsletter distribution list.
Read: Customer segmentation tools – and how they can help you
#5. Find out what works and put it to the test
In any marketer’s toolbox, A/B testing and multivariate testing are two of the most important tools to have.
Mailing lists are an excellent channel for testing because they are easy to manage.
With email, you have the ability to test:
- Different content variations: Design, Copy, Headlines, Subject Lined, content
- Multiple user segments: What works for Segment 1 vs Segment 2 vs Segment n using content variations
- Personalization: What works better – personalization vs no personalization
- Length of the email: Short, long, fewer links, more links
Email is extremely flexible in terms of everything from subject lines to CTAs (calls to action) and copy length versus image use.
Email provides an additional segmentation option that is not available through social media channels.
Receivers can be targeted based on their previous interactions:
- Have they read the email?
- Did they visit any of the links?
- What was the specific link that they clicked on?
Although there are numerous possibilities for displaying the level of engagement of a subscriber, these options are not available through social media channels.
Facebook allows for the targeting of users based on their demographics. The use of demographic targeting is not possible if your list consists solely of email addresses with no additional information.
As a result of the ability to publish an invisible post (one that is not visible in the newsfeed), Facebook is taking steps toward enabling users to test different messages on different audiences. However, the flexibility of Facebook’s options is far greater than that of email options.
It is possible that social networking sites will begin to provide marketers with tools that will allow them to access segmentation data as segmentation becomes more important.
They already have that information, but it is not available to us mere mortals because it is restricted to them.
Read: Email A/B Testing: Tools, Techniques, and Best Practices
- Get on top of policy and algorithmic restrictions
On social networking sites, there are numerous restrictions on the type of content that can be posted and shared.
Guns, porn, gambling, prescription drugs, and other vices are prohibited.
If you conduct business in any of those areas, you will most likely be barred from participating in social networking sites.
In the case of social networks, there are three masters to take into account:
First and foremost, there are rules established by the social media site that may result in your being banned even if you believe you are acting in accordance with the rules.
Second, because the content on social media sites is typically made available to a much larger audience than the intended audience, the law may prohibit you from posting certain information on social media sites. Prescription drugs are an excellent illustration of this.
Finally, what do you think other people would think of your argument?
Regardless of whether you run a site with questionable content and adhere to all applicable social media rules as well as local laws, you will still have to deal with the opinions of the general public, and your client base may not wish to be associated with your company in any public way.
In the case of email, the rules are a lot less stringent than in other situations. What you can and cannot do is dictated by the law.
When a person initiates a conversation with a business, the business is free to respond in great detail without risking legal repercussions.
Additionally, there is no third party to establish additional rules. Email is also considered private enough that people are willing to subscribe to lists that they would not necessarily admit to if they were doing so in the open.
It is not necessary for these topics to be pornographic or gambling-related in order for people to be secretive.
It can be anything from bad breath to skin conditions to baldness to plastic surgery to legal advice, and so on.
Read: What Are The Social Advertising Restrictions? — Part 1
- Leverage one channel well
Commercial email is something that most people are familiar with.
The receipt of an email containing business information and special offers is something that happens on a regular basis, and people have grown accustomed to it by now.
You can include a portion of a commercial offer in the email and then include some useful content on top of that.
In this way, your communication will become less about hard selling and more about providing value to your audience.
Promotion via email is the preferred channel of choice for many marketers.
With regard to social media sites, it is not entirely clear how much revenue is considered to be acceptable.
A single piece of social media content (a wall post, a tweet, an image, etc.) is typically focused on a single topic or idea.
It could be a sales message or something else entirely.
The one downside to email is that if a person receives an excessive number of sales messages in a row, they may wish to opt out.
Read: The Surprising Truth About Sending Too Many Emails
- Ride on the most popular communication channel
Email is still the most widely used electronic communication medium. The majority of people check it first thing in the morning and again before going to bed.
Consumers prefer email as their first online “check” of the day, according to a survey conducted by Nielsen. ExactTarget
Read: Email marketing – consumer preferences and behaviour update
- Own your list
Having an email list is analogous to having gold bullion stashed away under your bed. It’s yours to keep.
You have a direct line of communication with the people, and you can take advantage of it whenever you want. It is critical that you understand what you are doing, but you have complete control over the situation.
When it comes to third-party websites such as Facebook and Twitter, you are at the mercy of their decisions.
Do you have a Facebook application? Facebook has changed the width of its page.
Do you have thousands of followers on Instagram? Pay up in order to get through to them!
Facebook must find ways to justify its astronomical market capitalization.
Twitter has made some changes to the way in which you can access the data that you have created through the use of its API.
You can’t be certain that you’ll always have free access to your followers’ accounts.
- Increase your engagement
The value of a Facebook fan or a Twitter follower is significantly lower than the value of an email subscriber on your opt-in list, which is much higher. If you’re doing everything correctly, you should see an open rate of at least 20% in your inbox.
Click-through rates could be as high as 2-4 percent, or even higher. These figures may appear to be excessively low to some.
That’s because they’re Average Email Campaign Stats of MailChimp Customers by Industry, which means they’re representative of the average. You should set higher goals for yourself.
We can measure the rate of engagement on Facebook by counting the number of people who are “talking about this,” for example. Engagement rates tend to be in the 2-6 percent range if you are not running a campaign or posting something that goes viral on social media sites.
The upshot is that your email campaign will engage several times more people than your social media campaign. Encourage your followers to sign up for your email list by interacting with them through social media channels.
Take, for example, a 10,000-member email opt-in list that is pitted against a Facebook page with 10,000 likes on the same topic.
You would put your money on the email list in order to get the greatest amount of customer engagement possible (and eventually sales).
The least effective of the three would be a Twitter account with fewer than ten thousand followers.
When it comes to promotional messages, people prefer to receive them via email.
Apart from the fact that it increases engagement, people consider email to be the most important commercial channel.
More than three-quarters (77 percent) of those surveyed indicated that email is their preferred channel for permission-based promotional messages, according to a 2012 study by ExactTarget.
Only 4 percent of those who responded said this about Facebook, and only 1 percent said the same about Twitter.
Read: Email Engagement: 21 Ways to Measure and Improve It (2022)
What’s the bottom line?
Include social media in your newsletter and email marketing campaigns.
The notion that email lists are more effective than social media for delivering business results was the starting point of our debate.
Opponents have argued that it is equivalent to comparing apples and oranges. In a way, this is correct.
The effectiveness of different marketing tools varies, but the most important metric for any marketing effort is return on investment (ROI).
Your marketing efforts are motivated by a desire to sell your products and services. One of the objectives is to move the potential customer in the direction of completing a transaction.
Most of the time, email is the vehicle of choice for that.
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We help B2B companies, just like yours, with Account Based Marketing, Content Syndication, Intent Based Marketing, Lead Generation and List Building.
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