More important than that is understanding the answer to the question “what is email marketing?” in the real world. We all receive plenty of email marketing messages each and every day, most of them we lump into the SPAM category. They are wastes of time and space, they slow down and infect our computers, they try to sell us enhancement creams or steal our bank account information and of course they give the rest of us a bad name.

Therefore email marketing in the real world has fast taken on the definition of SPAM.  Again from Wikipedia, SPAM is, “The abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.”

In other words, email marketing for consumers is fast becoming aligned with fraudulent garbage. For sketchy, illicit or downright illegal business operations, email marketing has taken on the definition of the cheapest way to exploit loads of money from the unsuspecting public at large by poking and prodding repeatedly ad nauseam until somebody purposely or inadvertently caves in.

Now, what should email marketing be? I.M.P.O.R.T.A.N.T.

Now that we know what email marketing really is, by the literal definition and by the interpretations of both consumers and spammers, we should take a look at what email marketing should be. Email marketing should be I.M.P.O.R.T.A.N.T.

• Insightful
• Marketing
• (that’s)
• Personalized
• Optimized
• Relevant
• Targeted
• And
• Never
• Tired

Let’s break this down piece by piece so we have as clear a definition as we can. Email marketing should be insightful marketing. In other words, we should be using all of our judgment, knowledge, expertise and experience to deliver quality, handcrafted messages that not only will produce results, but also speak to the desires of our audience.

Email marketing should be personalized. First, that means building a permission based list of people who really want to hear from you. From there, it means using your name and showing pictures of yourself so your audience knows who you are. It means segmenting your list so that different people receive messages containing what they are most interested in, rather than a generic message of no real value.

Email marketing should be optimized. You should be testing every aspect of your email campaigns to see what works the best. Try different subject lines, content, layouts, color schemes, delivery times and more.

Email marketing should be relevant and targeted. Once again, segment your list into groups and learn what your audience is really interested in. Make your messages timely and full of valuable information that people can really use. Don’t just send what you feel like talking about; send what people want to hear.

Finally, email marketing should never be tired. This means that you shouldn’t keep sending out the same retread emails over and over again and you shouldn’t keep using that same template you had from your first email campaign in 2002.

Refresh your campaigns…bring in guests from other websites or companies to write on special topics…change your layouts so that they are more visually appealing and convert better in the process…think of new, fresh ideas for every email and always be trying new things… stay ahead of the curve and integrate new technology, services and methods instead of playing catch-up down the road.

So how can I answer the question, “what is email marketing”? How about, I.M.P.O.R.T.A.N.T.

That means that 1 in 5 of the people on your list never even have a chance to open your message, because it never reaches their inbox at all.

This study also featured some other email marketing statistics that might come as an unwelcome surprise to you and your organization. But like with anything else, and all of the latest email marketing trends, if you learn from the wealth of information that’s available, you can improve your results.

B2B Email Marketing Coming up Short

To be exact, the study states that only 79.3% of messages are delivered. Of the 20.7% which are not delivered, only 3.3% get sent to the junk box. That means that 17.4% of the emails you send out aren’t delivered, and you don’t even know it most of the time. They don’t show up as bounces or as SPAM, they just are lost in the fold.

Study Shows Some Nuts Are Tougher to Crack

The 5 most strict ISPs– meaning they don’t deliver the highest percentage of your B2B email marketing messages –are:

• Gmail – 23%
• Hotmail – 20%
• MSN – 20 %
• Comcast – 17%
• AOL – 16%

Additionally, when you’re sending B2B email marketing messages you’re much more likely to run into security and firewall programs such as Symantec, which only deliver about 72% of your messages.

You can view the press release download the full study here.

What Can you Learn?

So how can you effectively promote your small business using email marketing? Or for that matter, your medium or large sized corporation? The moral of the story is that you have to cover all of your bases, you can’t assume anything and you always have to be monitoring your results. Here are a few ideas to help you improve your email campaign deliverability:

1. Don’t Settle for an Average ESP – Don’t settle for an average email service provider. Find one that you know you can trust, and that is proven to deliver the results you are looking for.

2. Don’t assume anything – Never assume that anything that doesn’t show up as a bounce is a delivered email. From now on all emails you send out are guilty until being proven innocent.

3. Always clean your list – The cleaner you keep your list, the more you will improve your deliverability and the sooner you will catch any glaring holes or problems with your campaign or your list as a whole.

4. Talk to clients – Pick a random sampling of 10 or 20 names from your list for which you also have their full contact information. Spend half an hour calling all of them to see if they have been receiving your emails or not. If not, be sure to find out if the address you have is correct, who their ISP is and if they use any security firewalls. The more information at your disposal, the easier it will be to spot your own campaign email marketing trends.

5. Strive for perfection – Everything you do with your email campaigns can end up affecting your deliverability. Strive for perfection, and spend the necessary time to create effective, high quality campaigns and then to analyze and optimize them down the road.

As the above new email marketing statistics show, nothing is guaranteed in the world of B2B email marketing. However, if you take the time to understand the issues at hand and how you can to improve upon your shortcomings, you’ll still come out for the better on the other side.

Consider some of these various factors and then get ready to dive headfirst into picking the best email marketing software for you and your company or organization. All of the best email marketing programs for small businesses should enable you to do the following:

1. Work within your budget: Obviously if you are a small business it’s especially important for you to stay within your budgetary constraints. First you have to determine how much you are willing to spend on any of the email marketing programs that you choose. Do you have $10 a month to spend or $50 a month to spend? Ultimately, how much you are charged depends on the size of your list and/or the number of emails you send.

The good news is that many of the best email marketing software providers for small businesses have extremely cheap offers. For example you can

• sign up for an iContact free trial with plans starting at $9.95 per month or you can
• sign up for a Constant Contact free trial with plans starting at $15 per month.

Both of these email service providers provide low cost solutions that meet all of the expectations talked about below.

Considering they are free trials, you can try them or any of the other email marketing programs with free trials that we list with no hesitation, because there is nothing to lose.

2. Easily Create and Customize: Depending on the level of experience or comfort you have with running email campaigns, you may be looking for a different level of control or customization. If you’re just starting out, working with the given templates provided by companies is an easy way to allow you to create high quality, professional emails.

If you have more experience however you may be looking for tools that allow for more customization or for the importing of your own templates, to help differentiate you and your organization even more.

The best email marketing software providers will allow you to do both. Templates are a wonderful way to dive in to the world of email campaigns, but having that added oomph of customization is always beneficial as well.

3. Track and Optimize: Running an email campaign would be a rather futile effort if there was no way to track your results. The tracking capabilities of the best email marketing programs is what makes email one of the most effective forms of advertising and promotion across any medium or spectrum.

You should be able to find out information such as bounces, open rates, click throughs and more. Of course you also need to think about deliverability, which is something that you have control over but also rests in the hands of the email service provider that you choose.

Because of your only partial control over this matter, it elevates the importance of choosing one of the best email marketing software providers out there, which will ensure a high deliverability based on their longstanding reputation and the reputation of their many clients.

4. Experiment with other services: For some people, all they need from their email service provider is a platform to send out their basic newsletters. Many other people though enjoy incorporating customer survey software into their email programs. Other people like being able to automatically post old newsletters to their website, or set up feature rich autoresponders. Be sure the email marketing programs you are looking at have the features that you will wish to experiment with in the future.

Take a look at our articles on the most important email marketing statistics, segmenting your email list and tracking email campaigns for more information.

–Don’t forget about our Race to 50 New RSS Subscribers with a chance to win a free B2B email marketing consulting package.–

This is just an overview meant to give you an idea about how you can pick the best email marketing software for your company or organization. Cost isn’t everything, but it certainly is important. You may prefer to have more customization or an easier platform to work between, and you must be able to track and optimize your campaigns. There is no one best email marketing software, just the one that’s the best fit for your company.

So instead I’ll be focusing on the strengths of marketing by email even if there is a slumping economy. Alternatively and in other times, your business may be going through its own downward sloping cycle as the economy is doing fine, making marketing by email all the more important.

Emailing Your Way out of a Recession

Whether the entire economy is sputtering or your business is the only one falling off the cliff, you need to turn to marketing by email to pull you out of the scrap head and ahead of your competitors. You can email yourself right out of a recession or downturn if you have the right tools in place.

What’s the most important thing you have to do when your business is struggling or the economy is suffering and money is tight? You need to find a way to control costs, while still finding new customers. This can seem tricky at best, but the truth is that there’s no more cost effective way of marketing than email marketing. This holds true for businesses and nonprofit organizations alike.

A 2005 study by the Winterberry Group found that for every dollar spent on email marketing, $15.50 was earned. This is higher than direct mail, and vastly superior to telemarketing. Many other studies turn up the same thing – marketing by email is more cost effective than other marketing mediums.

There are no large upfront costs associated with marketing by email. Many companies now offer free trials for checking out their services, and monthly plans start as low as $10.

Additionally, just as you are trying to find a way to make a better use of your money in a recession, so are your potential customers, whether you’re selling to households or to other businesses. That means you have an opportunity to see some fantastic conversion rates when you offer special deals and discounts to your mailing list. Free shipping is a go to offer if you’re selling physical products, but general discounts also work well.

Try hitting two birds with one stone by offering incentives to your email list for finding you new list members. Tell them for every 3 new list members they refer, they’ll receive a 10% or 20% discount on their next order, or will receive a special free gift with their next order. You’ll acquire new prospects and make more sales.

The importance of email marketing is also growing due to the prevalence of email itself. Email is the preferred means of communication not just for younger generations, but for professionals and executives as well. With mobile devices becoming more capable and accessible as well, people can now view and respond to their emails from anywhere.

You have to be able to reach out to consumers where they prefer to conduct their own communication. It’s not hard to see that people don’t run out to their mailboxes 20 times a day looking for letters from friends and acquaintances from around the world. No, it’s the email inboxes they check all day long, where they spend a lot of time and where they are receptive to communication. Meet a consumer on his or her own domain, and you’ll have a greater chance of success.

Maybe all of this helps to explain that while 60% of marketers surveyed by the Aberdeen Group in January 2009 said they will be decreasing their traditional marketing spending, 47% will be increasing their budgets for marketing by email.

Not juicy enough for you? Well, Forrester has projected that total spending on email marketing is going to increase to more than $2 billion by 2014, from $1.2 billion in 2009.

So let’s see… lower your costs, increase your ROI, take advantage of the preferred means of communication to make easier connections with your customer base and on down the line we go. No matter how bad a recession is or how badly your own business is suffering, some clever marketing by email can pull you right out of the red.

Dos and Don’ts for Business to Business Email Marketing

1. Don’t be afraid to personalize your emails – Just because you’re sending out an email to another business doesn’t mean you have to turn off all signs of personality. In fact, injecting a little bit of personality into your emails will help you stand out from the crowd and will make your messages more compelling.

It’s important to remember that whether your list is built for business to business email marketing or anything else you should be able to come across as friendly, approachable and interesting.

2. Do use some restraint – With that being said, you don’t want to go overboard and flood your list’s email boxes with just anything. Considering you are sending out messages to other businesses, you have to be wary of the fact that they are receiving their messages at the office. Their email system probably has stricter SPAM controls that could block even whitelisted addresses if there is inappropriate language or restricted content. Therefore use your best judgment to not cross any boundaries.

3. Do emphasize cost savings and deals – Whether you are sending messages out to individual households or you are communicating with businesses, emphasizing the bargains and deals you provide is always important.

I think it’s especially important for business to business email marketing however, when the people making purchases have extremely rigid purchasing guidelines and often don’t make any purchases unless there is a special bargain or discount. Be sure to keep your list updated with your latest sales, deals and discounts to help see more sales and repeat business.

4. Don’t send excess emails – You want to keep in touch with your customers and prospects but you don’t want to border on harassment. We all know that even when we want to be receiving email from a person or group, when they send us too much, or more than we bargained for, we end up ignoring the messages. Therefore don’t send out more emails than is necessary and inform your list upfront how often they can expect to hear from you.

5. Do send emails at the right time – People don’t respond to messages the same way when they are received at different times. Monday morning is the worst time to send out an email because inboxes are swamped from the weekend and people have the week to prepare for. Friday afternoons are equally bad because people leave the office early and are eagerly anticipating their workday release.

Send your emails in the middle of the week – studies show that Tuesdays and Wednesdays receive the best responses. Late mornings are a good choice, since emails are often checked and responded to both before and after a lunch break.

Additionally, get to know your customers and keep tabs on their budgeting cycles. If you know the majority of your clients all get their budget together in April, or that the 15^th of month is a big buying time, then clearly you want to be sending your messages in these time frames to maximize the response you receive.

These 5 dos and don’ts will get you start down the path towards more successful business to business email marketing, enjoy!