Is your B2B company investing in email marketing campaigns but failing to see the increases in revenue? Email is a valuable tactic, with the highest Return on Investment (ROI) stats of any digital marketing approach, yet B2B companies are reportedly struggling to get the desired results. One of the primary challenges in 2016 proved to be responding to the growth of a mobile-first audience. However, what if B2B companies learned more about their mobile prospects and how to reach them effectively? What if they could take advantage of the fact that mobile audiences bring in twice the amount of revenue that desktop readers do? That’s where this article comes in. Let’s take a closer look at the shift in email consumption from desktop to mobile, how it’s impacting B2B marketing, and what strategies you can integrate into your digital marketing email campaigns—starting today.
Email has gradually shifted from being consumed at a desktop computer to being checked on a handheld device. From 2010–2015, the number of emails opened on mobile devices grew by 30%. Now in 2016, 66% of all emails are opened on phones or tablets. That clearly has an impact on marketing efforts. Once companies were concerned with how their emails would appear on different email clients, but now there is also a concern with how emails will look on the many devices in use today. According to Adestra’s Consumer Adoption & Usage Study, 72% of mobile email users will delete emails if they look ‘bad’ on their mobile device screen, so creating a good user experience is crucial if you want to appeal to the majority of your audience. Unfortunately, B2B companies haven’t been keeping up with this trend particularly well. The 2016 Email Marketing Benchmark Report found B2B companies to be one of the bottom performers when it comes to mobile email opens/consumption. However, what happens when companies do optimize for mobile? Vantage Point found that 41% of B2B companies improved their email marketing results.
Optimizing emails for mobile devices is key to getting prospects to open, read, click, and engage. Here are the key components of a mobile-friendly email that you should be incorporating into your digital marketing campaigns.
B2B decision makers are looking at emails on their mobile devices throughout the day. They are scanning their inboxes, quickly reading what they can, and making mental checks of what they want to read more carefully later on. Keep in mind that mobile devices only allow for about five words to be seen in the subject line, and anything after that is simply cut off. As such, in order to get your recipients’ attention, your words need to be interesting, relevant, engaging, and concise—especially considering that 1 in 3 email recipients opens an email based on the subject line alone. To pique a prospect’s interest, you must make the most out of the limited space available and stand out from the other emails they are scrolling through. There are many ways to do this, such as using words that create urgency, showing your human side, creating a curiosity gap, referencing pop culture, offering expertise, using personalization, trying reverse psychology, or employing cliff hangers. Start by checking out these two resources for subject line inspiration:
Next, brainstorm a few subject lines for your next email and run A/B tests to find out which perform best with your audience. You’ll be doing this from now on to find the subject lines that perform best in terms of increasing opens and clicks.
The pre-header text is content that appears under the subject line of emails on the preview screen. It shows the first sentence in the email to give a preview of what the email contains.
Take a look at this chart from the Movable Ink 2015 Device Preference Report. More than half of emails opened on mobile devices are read for less than 15 seconds. Furthermore, a significant percentage of recipients only read emails for three seconds.
Next up, the time of day that you send your emails matters. Mobile devices have created an ‘always on, always tuned in’ effect, meaning that B2B buyers are likely checking their phone throughout the day, every day. They are not guaranteed to be sitting at their desk with no distractions. Instead, they’re in meetings, traveling, driving, at conferences, etc. If you send an email when the person is busy, they are more likely to skip over it. Even if they do want to revisit it later, the 2016 Consumer Adoption and Usage Study found that 59% of consumers leave an email unread if they plan to read it later, while only 33% flag it. So, it is critical to study your target audience and their behaviors. Ask yourself:
Maybe your audience is largely in the Pacific Standard Timezone, and they work Monday to Friday, 8–5. You may see a jump in opens if you send your email between 12pm–1pm when most of your prospects are eating lunch. Maybe you have better results on Sunday night when your audience has more time to pay attention to the emails they are receiving. There’s only one strategy to find out: conduct research, make informed hypotheses, and run tests.
Last but not least, run tests before sending your emails out to your list. View it on a variety of different devices and browsers. Ensure that:
Treat the above as a simple pre-scheduling checklist.
There’s no question about it—B2B marketers who optimize their email marketing campaigns for mobile benefit from an improvement in results. Don’t write off this strategy because 2016 presented new challenges. In order to take full advantage of email in your digital marketing campaign, keep these mobile optimization tips in mind:
Do you have any further questions regarding email marketing? Let us know in the comments section below!