Killer Email tips to Enhance Outbound Marketing

If you have been guilty of concentrating too much on your inbound lead route and forgetting (notwithstanding the recent GDPR legislation around consent) about the outbound methods, maybe it’s time to make your marketing a little more omnichannel and targeted…?

Choose your words carefully – what get’s your attention?

Words are incredibly powerful weapons, choosing the right, emotive ones can instantly determine whether your marketing message, brand objective or sales campaign is a success or not.

TDP Marketing recently completed a successful outbound B2B campaign for a financial services company who asked us to communicate with their prospects. The initial engagement went from a standard-ish 16% open rate using the clients suggested subject lines – increased to a whopping 63% – the same content, just a different outbound message with the optimized copy. OK, you can argue the old variables like time of day etc, but the elephant in the room here is resonance.

Using the wrong opener, in any situation risks your objectives sinking without trace.  Critically, marketers need to think about what it is you want your customer to do – only ask them to do one thing per message. For example:

• BUY NOW
• SUBSCRIBE HERE
• SHOP THE SALE
• LEARN MORE
• DOWNLOAD NOW
• ENTER HERE
• SEE WHAT WE RECOMMEND FOR YOU
• START YOUR FREE TRIAL

URGENT! Read this – immediately

Get the point – your eyes went straight to this, didn’t they? Most CTAs are time-critical. In which case, make it clear you want your customer to act now shop now, do something – now. It works, just make sure you have a point, people are time short and bombarded with messaging. Remember the maxim K.I.S.S. in email marketing – it’s never been more relevant than right now.

Some customers may react the wrong way to being told to do something immediately and we’ll get into A/B testing shortly, but the different use of language in one email vs. another might be something you want to consider – and test, test, test.

To stand out, you need to be seen

A good CTA needs to stand out from the rest of the email to grab your customer’s attention. Don’t make the colours or design the same as your brand palette and design. Choose a different tone & typeface. Give it room to breathe. What we mean by that is, try and make sure there’s plenty of space around the Call to Action. Don’t stick it right in the middle of a load of text.

Mobile is the now most popular method for consuming email and that’s across both B2B & B2C. That’s why getting the size of your CTA right is imperative. Clicking a link on your desktop is easy: touching a CTA with your thumb can be slightly more difficult, send the test to yourself and try it on mobile, if it’s tricky for you, what’s it like for your customers?  Apple’s iPhone Human Interface Guidelines recommend a minimum target size of 44 x 44 pixels.

Get contextual with your design

We’ll say it again, you need to test. Sell what people want to buy, not what you’ve bought. Try sending out two creatives using two different buttons: maybe one that’s blue and one that’s red, or try two different sets of copy. See

what works best for you and your users so you can optimize ongoing sends. If you’re not using a very sophisticated email broadcast platform, ask someone else to broadcast it for, TDP sends plenty of our clients’ emails on their behalf with content and branding supplied for good reason. Try sending out two creatives using different CTA & subject lines, one of them is going to outperform the other. We have the tools and the experience to test & benchmark your campaigns and give the impartial advice that’s often scarce around real-world results.

Email broadcasting – learning from others

66% of brands are not using any segmentation according to the DMA, meaning email campaigns lack relevancy, “everyone gets everything” angle just smacks of poor data management. 53% of companies don’t send an aftersales review email, highlighting a distinctly uncaring and cold message from brands and the same ratio in retail failed to send an abandoned cart email. Companies who have lost touch with their outbound marketing, specifically email marketing ought to be reminded that 37% of companies mix editorial with promotional content, and just 13% sent editorial-only campaigns, which conversely have the highest open rate.

To keep up with the perma-connected, forever-on customers of 2018, marketers need to utilize powerful technology and leverage the right data to compose meaningful and direct messages that compel customers to act. The average ROI for every pound spent on email marketing is £30, how does that compare with your PPC marketing acquisition AOV?

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