The Big Reveal: What Mattered Most to Email Marketers in 2016

Each week on the blog we cover topics that reflect the most pressing challenges and top interests of today’s email marketers. To find out what mattered most to our audience in 2016, we took a look at Google Analytics and uncovered our five most popular blog posts for the year in terms of page views. Here’s our “Top 5” list:

1)   4 Things Email Marketers Need to Know About Targeting SMBs: B2B marketers who work at larger, more established Fortune 1000 or 2000 companies often target their campaigns on small or medium sized businesses (SMBs). When doing so, they sometimes frame their communications strategies in terms of how their own companies operate, perhaps assuming that smaller companies do business in much the same way. In our experience, this is a mistake. But it’s a common one that can be easily addressed. When targeting SMBs, it’s critical to understand your target’s daily business life, and put yourself in their shoes so that your marketing messages will resonate. Read our four tips for targeting SMBs here.

2)   The Subject of Subject Lines: This is a topic that has generated a lot of interest from our readers and clients. After all, if this critical element of the message is ignored or mishandled, everything else about your email message content becomes irrelevant -- it will likely not get opened, read or even delivered in the first place. That’s why the subject of subject lines is one that should be revisited and reviewed on a regular basis. Read our seven email subject line tips for B2B marketers here.

3)   5 Steps to Better B2B Email Marketing Data: A reliable business contact data source offers a valuable way to jumpstart or augment an email list, giving companies the ability to obtain not only the email addresses – but also the telephone numbers and office addresses of new leads and prospects that fit their customer profiles. Many businesses still hesitate to use acquired email data, and I think they’re missing out, especially since email marketing is so critical to customer expansion and the B2B sales funnel. At OMI, we’ve worked with a number of leading brands that have successfully used our business contact data to drive higher email open rates and ignite sales. If you think you want to strengthen your email reach, here are five things to look for when acquiring email data.

4)   6 Reasons Email Is the Center of the Digital Marketing Galaxy: As marketing evolves from influencing prospects and customers to tracking which messages resonate best with them and where they are in their buying journeys, email resides firmly central to the marketing process. Facebook’s recent alliance with Dunnhumby (a U.K.-based customer analytics and insights provider) underscores the importance of using email to identify and track prospects from digital channels (like Facebook) to paying customers. If a tacit endorsement by Facebook isn’t enough, here are six reasons why email remains at the center of the B2B marketing galaxy, and why it should remain a key part of your digital marketing technology stack.

5)   Low Email Campaign Response: Here’s What to Do: As experienced B2B marketers know, a big percentage of your email recipients will not have clicked through, or even opened your email. What should you do next? Here are 7 tips for getting better email marketing engagement.

There are no big surprises in this list. What’s clear is that email marketers are always learning, and always intent on improving their skills, initiatives and success. On that note, here’s to your success in 2017. All of us at OMI wish you a prosperous and Happy New Year!

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Outward Media’s accurate, targeted email data can help you achieve better email marketing ROI, and convert more prospects into customers. Ask us how. Also, take a look at our complimentary new e-book on building a successful B2B email marketing database.