Demand Generation Machine

Just as gatekeepers can be a tele-marketers nightmare, the spam filter can be the email marketers boogeyman. Millions of carefully crafted B2B email messages sit in the spam boxes of executives laptops and machines every single day and fail to fulfill its purpose. Most of you would agree that spam filters are a necessary evil and personally I don’t believe I would be able to live without one. With the volume of junk emails that pour into our inboxes everyday it only makes sense that these spam filters tighten the criteria and handle incoming mail more strictly even if it means that one or two legitimate emails are sacrificed in the process.

B2B email marketing campaigns still play a crucial role in B2B lead generation strategies and that is not going to change anytime soon. They can be expensive, require careful consideration and thought to execute well and can be disappointing when you’ve done everything right and the only reader was a piece of software code which scanned your email, identified a few trends and confined your email to that horrible place marked “SPAM or JUNK“. The only thing email marketers can do to get their message across is understand the reasons their emails are being filtered out and keep a step ahead by making sure they do everything to avoid being filtered.

Some tips to evade that junkmail folder :-

-Make sure your emails are sent from an authorized service provider or a server that has not been black listed

- Avoid using words or language patterns that are typically found in bulk-mail or common spam

- Choose your subject line wisely and make sure it does not come across like an unsolicited advertisement or a subject line typically used in bulk mail

- Avoid too many links within the email body and use them only where required. Links are often frowned on by most spam filters

-Avoid attachments as far as possible since attachments are the amongst the first things a filter would scan for a s a virus threat

-Stick to using plain text as much as possible while drafting emails, HTML emails are more likely to get filtered

-Avoid adding more than 2-3 emails in the BCC section, large number of BCC’d mails are trademarks of spammers

-Here is a great list of words “not to use” in your emails “Click Here”

- Test your final draft, send it to people you know, use a tool like Content Checker to do a dry run and if its still being filtered take another crack at the draft

Try some of these tips the next time you send out an email campaign. The only way to stay ahead of those pesky spam filters is understand how they work and then work around them. Happy marketing!

If you have ever launched an email campaign on a a list that hasn’t been updated very recently and starred in horror with eyes wide open as your inbox starts filling up with email bounce replies, then you’ll be able to relate to the aborigine launching a boomerang in the picture above. It’s another part of the ReadyContacts.com landing page campaign we will be running with focussed messages around the B2B list building service. This one comes straight out of personal experience and I’m sure we have all sent out an email campaign on an unreliable list at some point or the other and seen you’re hopes of a good response drop when you see those mails you sent coming back at you. Running an email verification process and having the data updated before launching a campaign can save a lot of money as well as effort and thats precisely what the ReadyContacts service offers. The landing page which you can view here carries a simple message which just says that if you plan to launch an email campaign on a list you know is not very reliable, weigh out the option of running an email verification check which will help you with a stronger, more accurate list for your campaign…. maybe in not so many words but the boomerang says it all right?

We have just updated and gone live with a new version of Activecontacts.net F500 which is good news for sales and marketing folks who target IT business contacts within the Fortune 500 companies. The database currently has a little over 8000 technology contacts within the fortune 500 companies and includes contacts ranging from higher VP level contacts to deep rooted contacts which provides reach across levels and this database will continue to grow and be updated. Having used subscription databases before one of the biggest drawbacks we have seen is that although the number of contacts grow the quality of the data has a shelf life and deteriorates to the point where your campaigns run ineffective because the data was no longer valid. Instead of having a very large database which is virtually impossible to keep updated we have a more focussed database which provides all the important contact data for decision makers within these companies and a good range of roles while keeping it small enough so that our internal team can update the database regularly and keep the quality of the data fresh. ActiveContacts has been built keeping in mind the data that is required to run email, direct mail and telephone based campaigns and includes email addresses and direct or one-hop phone numbers with each contact. So if you are in the IT space and the Fortune 500 is your next target get in touch with us and we’ll help you get started with ActiveConatcts.

One of the first and most critical points Brian J. Carroll in his book titled “Lead Generation for the Complex Sale” makes is “Conversation, not campaign”. It’s something that you can not agree with more if you have been involved with complex sale lead generation and yet how many of us actually implement this while sending out an introductory email? While many will ensure that sales calls are more personal and conversation based this doesn’t always translate down to email campaigns which are often just a brochure or presentation sent to an email address rather than a mail with more of a human touch. Personalizing introduction emails and turning them into the start of a conversation you would normally have with a prospect will always show results. We have been working on two such email campaigns in parallel over the last week and seen not just a better rate in conversion into initial appointments but more replies in general. More tips on this coming up in the next post so stay tuned.