E-Mail Marketing is Alive ‘N Kickin’

I’m sure you’ve read many articles and news bulletins on the declining effectiveness of e-mail marketing. Yet, the basic e-newsletter continues to deliver good results in B2B and technical marketing.

I read a recent article on BtoBonline about how IBM Corp. is using e-newsletters to engage readers, drive traffic to their site and generate new leads. IBM not only uses its own e-newsletters to build brand awareness and generate leads, but it also relies on placing ads in outside e-newsletters to reach those publications’ audiences.

“It’s an affordable way to reach a targeted and engaged audience,” said Christine Grasso Jacobs, program director of interactive marketing for IBM General Business Americas. “It also helps drive prospects back to our Web presence so they can find richer content on our site.”

Ms. Jacobs offers very valuable tips on the effective use of ads in outside e-newsletters:

1. Target your audience – don’t just make a list, dig deep, down to the most granular level possible to determine who you want your message to reach

2. Find the right e-newsletter – once you’ve found the right newsletter(s), pay close attention to its/their content. It is the right content that will draw in and engage the audience that you are trying to reach

3. Use targeted metrics to measure your return on investment – for measuring awareness, she suggests looking at your click-through rates (IMO, this could be misleading sometimes). For people who visit your site, make sure you have a way to capture those leads and nurture them with targeted content to determine their interest and where they are in the decision making cycle

4. Don’t be afraid to try new things – since e-mail marketing is relatively inexpensive and feedback is immediate, don’t be afraid to experiment, test and try different things

You can read the full article from here.