Roundtable Report: B2B Email Marketing

Sponsored by Newsweaver

The panellists:

Denise Cox- Newsweaver (Chair)

Jennifer Curtin- Newsweaver

Davina Lines- Netimperative

Graham Murphy- SPG Media

Catherine Calhoon- Lyris

Phil Williams- Rocketseed

Mindy Wallen- Lyris

Kath Pay- Ezemail

Mark Wiggins- Alchemy Worx

Robin Langford- Netimperative

A summary of the key points brought up during the roundtable follows below. To hear the discussion in full, download the two MP3 files at the foot of this page.

Introduction- Stats on B2B Email

The roundtable began with a short presentation from Jennifer Curtin, Marketing Manager at Newsweaver. Jennifer relayed the findings of several different industry reports and some exclusive market research which was conducted by B2B Marketing Magazine and sponsored by Newsweaver.

Jennifer’s presentation examined email usage amongst B2B marketers and revealed that the market is booming. This is supported by the IAB Internet Marketing Survey (2006) which found that 83% of B2B marketers currently use some form of B2B email marketing.

The IAB survey also found that the main focus of companies using B2B email marketing is to sell products, with newsletters and customer acquisition closely following behind.

Significantly, a recent B2B Marketing Insight Report (2007) indicated that email will become the biggest growth B2B marketing medium this year, with growth in investment in email overtaking that for direct mail for first time.

The email marketing survey conducted by B2B Marketing Magazine surveyed the marketing habits of over 170 B2B companies, and showed that most firms placed the value of B2B email marketing as ‘very important’, while more than half of these emails were being sent to business customers, followed by prospective customers.

In terms of objectives, the research suggested that customer relationships management and attracting new prospects were top of the agenda in most companies’ B2B email strategies, followed by upselling. Importantly, only 7% of those interviewed used the medium for brand building campaigns.

Moving onto metrics, the research showed that open rates and click through rates were most likely to be higher amongst existing customers than any other recipients.

Jennifer went on to show that email budgets tend to be small, with B2B email marketing typically only making a small percentage (around 5%) of most firms overall marketing budgets.

In terms of volume, the research showed most firms send an average of just one B2B marketing mail shot a month, with the majority sending to less than 5,000 recipients a month.

An interesting finding from the research was that most firms conduct their B2B email marketing in-house, using a variety of methods. Less than one in five firms (17%) outsource the task to a specialist email service provider.

In terms of challenges, spam was still top of the list of concerns, followed by the impact of spam filters.

When asked about future trends of B2B email marketing, most respondents saw emails becoming more personalised and selective, with most businesses expecting to increase their spend in the sector in the near future.

The full results from the B2B Marketing Magazine survey are due to be released in June 2007.

Discussion Session 1

Following on from the presentation, Denise Cox, Newsletter Specialist at Newsweaver, took the role of chairperson for the afternoon, and began by asking the panel if there were any figures from the research that seemed surprising.

Mindy Wallen said she was surprised by the trend to keep B2B marketing in-house, and hypothesised   that the choice to outsource is more prevalent in the US. Many in the panel thought that B2B marketing was still evolving, and many companies simply have not got enough customer emails yet to justify a large spend on B2B email marketing.

Graham Murphy contended that it remains hard to build lists, and the panel went on to debate the pros and cons of buying email lists.

Phil Williams said the key performance indicator for B2B email is getting that ‘closed loop’ of a final transaction from the email recipient- attained by following the process from emails sent through to customer conversion. He added the importance of linking email activities with a good customer relationship management (CRM) system.

The panel went on to look at how the buying cycles of B2B email customers are often longer than that of their B2C counterparts, meaning it is less a case of  ‘if’ but ‘when’ a recipient responds to email marketing messages.

Davina Lines put forward the notion that the cost of entry could be a major barrier preventing more firms from outsourcing their emails to specialists. If they are sending low volumes, would it not make economical sense to simply ‘BCC’ their target list using their standard email system?

Mark Wiggins argued that while this can make sense in some cases, even small lists can benefit from specialist approach if targeted correctly, resulting in a higher return on investment in the long run.

The discussion moved onto the issue of unsubscription. Mindy Wallen recounted the common habit of recipients constantly deleting commercial emails rather than unsubscribing. She pointed to research that identified the number of unsubscriptions is growing as customers begin to trust the senders to honour the request.

Denise said this marked part of a growing trend towards ‘letting the customer drive’ when it comes to email. By letting recipients have more control over the content they get, the advertiser benefits from a far more receptive lead.

The panel moved on to discuss the need to educate clients on the benefits of quality leads as opposed to simply getting the biggest contact list possible. The first session closed with the panellists looking at the need for clients to join up email marketing with the performance of their website. Kath Pay added that while clients like this idea in principle, their enthusiasm often wanes once they look at the cost of implementation.

Discussion Session 2

The second session began with Mark Wiggins asking the group how they handle inactive or dormant subscribers (eg. those recipients who never open or respond to emails). He argued that in this case, the metrics used should go ‘beyond the click’ and instead, marketers should look at recency and frequency.

Davina Lines brought up the subject of preview panes, and whether they are not being picked up or registered as an open, therefore skewing the results, and could also falsely label a subscriber as ‘inactive’.  Many in the panel agreed this was a problem, but Phil Williams asserted that the only metric that really counts is the conversion at the end.

Mark agreed with this, going on to say that email marketing needs to move from being a campaign-based medium to a relationship-based one.

The panel was then asked to give examples of good email marketing campaigns. Phil reported on one client that saw a click thorough rate of 30% for a campaign, but said this was a rare occurrence. Mindy Wallen cited her work with Arsenal F.C. who attained high merchandise sales rates through fans on their email lists.

Mark Higgins cited a pet company that captured a high volume of consumer data through an email photo competition.  Jennifer and Graham both cited client campaigns that segmented recipients in dynamic ways to help analyse and act upon data from their customer base to a truly granular level of detail.

Phil Williams added that the most successful B2B email campaigns have three key ingredients:  being “targeted, timely and relevant.”

Mark Wiggins said an idea that is often overlooked by advertisers is to offer exclusive content and offers on newsletters, making the email more than simply a smaller version of the website.

The panel then looked at the role of trade bodies, and their support of the sector. Phil Williams said that trade bodies such as the Direct Marking Association (DMA) and the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) have pushed email more in recent times. He felt that advertisiers still need more help, and suggested the use of more self help tools for email campaigns, such as applications that can test if a mail is likely to be detected as spam by inbox providers.

The group concluded the discussion by examining the role of ISPs and email inbox providers, looking at  increased adoption of spam filters, and the protocols being used for white-listing and black-listing advertisers. Phil Williams pointed out that these protocols are constantly changing due to the ever-changing types of spam techniques being used, making it very difficult for legitimate advertisers to adapt each time.

To listen to the discussion in full, download the two MP3 audio files below.

Session 1 Podcast: Runtime 1 hr 0 mins (10.4 MB)

Session 2 Podcast: Runtime 41mins (7.1 MB)