Marketing a manufacturing business can feel like shouting into the void. You have something to say, you’re desperate to get it out, but you’ve no clue whether you’re reaching the right people with the right message. Email marketing for manufacturing offered by Cain & Company helps you hone and deliver an effective message tailored to the right audience. We have a team of experienced designers and copywriters to not only craft visually appealing communications with a storytelling element, but also include keywords for SEO.
So, let’s look at a few common mistakes many manufacturing businesses make in their email marketing and what you should be doing instead.
There are so many ways that even B2B marketing services can leave customers feeling like an afterthought. Emails are sent at inconvenient times, subject lines are poorly conceived, little effort is made to personalize the content, and it seems as though each email does nothing more than sell, sell, sell.
The solution: Welcome your customer. Thank them and give them something they can use—a white paper, a tip sheet, an explainer—right off the bat, and be sure to break up sales content with other actionable items that get attention. You should also set expectations for the kinds of emails they’ll see and how often they’ll get them, and customize them as well as possible.
Some businesses are lucky enough that their manufacturing niche is exceedingly narrow. But if you cover a number of niches—a medical device company that markets to physical therapists, orthopedists, and dentists, for example—not all of your clients will need the same information, and if what they’re getting isn’t relevant, they’ll look for the exits.
The solution: In your signup process, solicit information from your clients that helps you better understand them so that you can deliver custom marketing content that’s relevant and timely. Your customer relationship management (CRM) gives you many ways to leverage this information; use them!
Most of us check our email several times per day using our mobile phones. Unfortunately, not every email provider makes their templates mobile-friendly, and there are times that emails may display differently across different devices.
The solution: Ensure that your provider offers mobile-friendly templates. If you’re designing your own, make sure that you’re not constraining the structure and graphics sizes. And regardless of how your emails are put together, test them before sending to ensure they’ll display properly.
If a customer is interested, how will they get in touch? Are you trying to get them to take a survey, direct them to a specific page, or invite specific feedback? And how clear are you making your expectations? Likewise, your customers have certain expectations. They expect to be able to find the essentials, like calls to action, a means of replying with questions, or even the unsubscribe button.
The solution: Send from an address that’s set up to receive incoming mail and that is monitored—not donotreply@yourdomain.com. And keep buttons and links obvious; your call to action should be a button or should be in a contrasting color to indicate it’s clickable, and your unsubscribe button ought not to be buried in tiny, low-contrast print.
Most of us check our email several times per day using our mobile phones. Unfortunately, not every email provider makes their templates mobile-friendly, and there are times that emails may display differently across different devices.
The solution: Ensure that your provider offers mobile-friendly templates. If you’re designing your own, make sure that you’re not constraining the structure and graphics sizes. And regardless of how your emails are put together, test them before sending to ensure they’ll display properly.
Manufacturing marketing emails will average a 23% percent open rate. Each step further along in the process—clicking on a call to action, making an inquiry, closing a sale—sees further falloff. We’ve already seen the importance of customization and targeting, but it’s important to bear in mind that the larger and more diverse your list, the more challenging that customization becomes.
The solution: Prune the deadwood on a quarterly basis. A smaller list of engaged customers who are happy to receive your content is also more likely to convert than one that’s bloated.
None of us is born knowing the ins and outs of effective email marketing, but at the same time, we know it’s something that’s vital to our success. So, we start from the assumption that something—anything—must be better than nothing, so we’ll wing it and hope for the best. What’s the worst that can happen? Well, your time and money are finite, so the time you’re spending on things that don’t work isn’t serving your best interests..
The solution: Get in touch with Cain & Company of Rockford, Illinois, to communicate your values while meeting or exceeding your customers’ expectations.
