Imagine receiving an unsolicited email from a recruiter whose strategy involves sending 50,000 emails daily, all to secure just one lead. This means 49,999 inboxes are cluttered for a single phone call. If each recipient spends five seconds reviewing and deleting that message, it equates to 70 work hours wasted.
And even when that one lead is found, there’s no assurance that that lead will be enthused about your offering! This is the problem of B2B spam, which has been curbed in recent years due to sophisticated filters, but despite the increased sophistication of our inboxes, there are still rogues running huge and untargeted plays.
Each day, we’re forced to navigate through a flood of emails, many of which are irrelevant and downright intrusive. The definition of spam is “unsolicited messages” sent at scale, with unsolicited meaning it’s not asked for or requested.
Given that spam now accounts for between 45% and 56% of all email traffic worldwide, or an estimated 162 billion spam emails sent daily, this means that every other email received is considered spam!
In this article, we'll look at some of the factors around B2B email marketing, before analysing the factors influencing deliverability, so that you don't end up with the undesirables. After all, there's nothing worse than spending time crafting an interesting, relevant, and deeply personalised email, only for it to be sent down because some fumbling algorithm misunderstood your intentions.
A whopping 41% of marketers admit that email is their most effective marketing channel, and 77% of marketers have reported an increase in email engagement in the last 12 months, both of which point to the continued prevalence of email as a marketing and sales channel.
Aside from the obvious problem of B2B salespeople using spray-and-pray methods to send irrelevant messages, B2B email marketing is plagued by a number of suboptimal lead generation and distribution methods:
1. Purchased Email Lists: B2B marketers are more likely to buy email lists, thinking it's a quick way to gain contacts, but this often leads to high spam complaints, hard bounces, and spam traps. You can’t buy permission, and these lists often include outdated or inactive emails, causing serious deliverability issues.
2. Rented Email Lists: Renting lists might sound better, but it’s fraught with similar risks. True list rentals should ensure that the list owner manages the email distribution, uses their sender name, and includes their unsubscribe link.
3. Distributed Subscriber Acquisition: B2B subscriber acquisition is often decentralised, making it hard to enforce permission standards.
4. Rogue Distribution Lists: Sales teams sometimes create their own email service provider accounts, leading to rogue distribution lists.
5. Event-Based List Growth: In-person events are a common source of B2B leads, but they often involve paper forms, leading to transcription errors and high bounce rates.
6. Form-Based Lead Generation: Report download and webinar registration forms are common B2B lead generation tools. However, pre-checked opt-in boxes or buried consent can lead to high spam complaints and the use of secondary or temporary email addresses, which eventually bounce.
Spam not only clutters communication channels and erodes trust but also has significant environmental impacts. A study by McAfee revealed that the carbon footprint of a single spam email is 0.3g CO2. Multiplied by billions, the annual carbon footprint of spam is equivalent to around 3 million petrol cars running non-stop. The energy and water required to cool data centres and the e-waste generated are a relentless burden upon the ecosystem.
In such a competitive inbox environment, personalised and targeted communication is crucial. Research shows that personalised emails can lead to a 28.57% increase in click-through rates. B2B companies should invest in segmentation and personalization strategies to craft messages that resonate with their audience.
Additionally, understanding and mitigating the seven core email deliverability factors is key.
Unlike B2C brands, B2B companies face unique challenges, including the scrutiny of corporate email servers and stringent IT policies. Moreover, as corporate email platforms like Google Workspace and Outlook 365 gain traction, B2B email deliverability is increasingly mirroring B2C norms.
61% of marketers say improving email deliverability rates is a big challenge, and yet in 2023, the average email deliverability rate was 85.7%! Thais means that 14.3% of emails never reach the intended inbox; of those, 6.3% of emails land in spam folders, and 8% of emails are undelivered.
As such, inbox placement now hinges on seven core factors: infrastructure, volume, email content, bounces and spam traps, spam complaints, engagement, and reputation.
1. Infrastructure: Choose a reliable email service provider (ESP) that supports email authentication standards like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to enhance deliverability.
2. Email Volume: Maintain consistent sending patterns and gradually ramp up email volumes to avoid scrutiny. Small senders benefit from shared IP addresses, which stabilise volume. Studies show consumers prefer to receive emails from their favorite brands just a few times per month, so anything more than once a week maybe be considered spammy.
3. Content: Ensure clean, properly coded emails without malicious elements. Avoid URL shorteners and links to websites with poor reputations.
4. Bounces and Spam Traps: By following good subscriber acquisition practices, you should aim to avoid high bounce rates and sending to spam traps which signal poor practices and damage deliverability.
5. Spam Complaints: Keep complaint rates below 0.1% by ensuring users opt-in, providing easy unsubscribe options, and maintaining email relevance.
6. Engagement: Email engagement is the fourth most important metric for B2B marketers for measuring B2B content performance. Manage inactive subscribers and use segmentation and personalization to boost engagement.
7. Reputation: Maintain a good sender reputation by balancing quality and quantity in email lists, as mailbox providers weigh multiple factors to calculate reputation.
Focusing on these factors will ensure your email is delivered, opened, and hopefully read. The challenges of B2B spam are significant but not insurmountable, and the benefits of having a strong email marketing presence shouldn't be understated. After all, 59% of people say that email marketing affects purchasing decisions, and 60% of consumers made a purchase thanks to a marketing email they received!
Avoiding the pitfalls of B2B spam and focusing on infrastructure, volume, email content, bounces and spam traps, spam complaints, engagement, and reputation ensures that your email ends up in the inbox. It’s time for your message to be read!
We have traditionally been told that large scale, unsolicited messages are spam. But what if the unsolicited message is so deeply relevant and personalised to the prospect that they would feel foolish saying no! This is Super Benji's modus operandi. Benji demonstrates that, by cold emailing prospects with a hook that intrigues and an offer that speaks to the individual, unanticipated messages at scale are only considered spam when they are unwanted, not unsolicited! Try the free trial to see how Benji can land your offer squarely in your prospect's inbox, at scale, without ever resorting to spam.
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