September 18, 2000
Event Wrap-up

Top 5 Take-Aways from ClickZ’s B-to-B Email Strategies Event

SUMMARY: No summary available.
Some 100 plus marketers traveled to New York last week to learn from ClickZ’s B-to-B email show. Here are the top five most interesting items our reporter on the spot gathered for you:

1) Renting lists for B-to-B email marketing is generally not an effective way to develop your own list. Even opt-in lists don’t have a terribly high response rate unless you target very, very carefully (and online lists don’t have much segmentation available yet.) Recipients perceive that email as spam because they never specifically opted-in for your particular email (even if they agreed to be on the opt-in list in general.) Instead build your own in-house list as much as possible; and, test placing ads in email newsletters that recipients look forward to.

2) Grow your in-house email list by creating an email newsletter for your company that has valuable information -- business tips for example -- instead of just sales information. People are more likely to forward newsletters they perceive as valuable to their colleagues.

3) Speak to your customers in a human voice not an overly-corporate one. Put a person’s name in the “from” section of your email rather than just a company name. They know you, so act like you know them.

4) Don’t spam. A lot of business marketers don’t realize they are spamming when they do it! If you’re doing email marketing right, you’re trying to build an ongoing relationship. If you’re spamming someone, you’re just trying to sell them something now and you don’t care about the relationship. Here are some tell-tale signs of spam:

- high volume pitch (in other words a very salesy tone)

- no point of contact and/or no return address

- untargeted message or message sent to general non-targeted list

- no opt-out information so people can get off list

- list used is not an opt-in one that people have willingly joined in expectation of receiving the exact type of message you just sent.

5) Watch out with your international email marketing! If you’re sending email marketing in France, it has to be written in French or you’re breaking the law. In Germany, opting-in must be a “willful and distinguishable act.” Other countries have rules and regulations you can’t begin to guess at. So don’t. Research before you market to them.

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