Best Practices for More Effective E-Newsletter Advertising:

Transcription

1 Best Practices for More Effective E-Newsletter Advertising: Practical tips for maximizing this marketing channel

2 Contents 2 Executive Summary...3 Why E-Newsletter Advertising...4 E-Newsletter Trends in B2B Industrial Marketing...5 Understanding the E-Newsletter Subscriber...6 Types of Advertisements...7 Organize Your Advertisement...8 Tips for Writing Successful Ad Copy...9 How to Design Your Advertisement for E-Newsletter Readers Activity Generated from E-Newsletter Advertisements...11 Conclusion...12 About Media Solutions... 13

3 Executive Summary 3 By placing your company, products and services in front of an engaged, targeted audience, e-newsletter advertising can hold an essential place in your marketing mix, helping you reach your marketing goals. Engineers and technical professionals subscribe to e-newsletters to stay up to date on the latest products, trends and news that s important to them. E-newsletters are a resource for members of the engineering, industrial and manufacturing communities during all phases of their search, research and purchasing cycles. Placing your products and services in front of these engineers and technical professionals as they seek information and start to make buying decisions can help create engagement opportunities for your company. Your efforts, however, will only be as effective as the copy, image and call-to-action that make up your advertisement. Your readers want to see the value of your products and services and how you can help them perform their jobs more effectively and efficiently. Following best practices to compose compelling, valuable content for your readers will help increase the chances your advertisements are noticed and encourage readers to take the next step by clicking through on your call-to-action link and creating an engagement opportunity. With e-newsletter advertisements, you can observe reader actions to help you determine the effectiveness of your ad placement, whether you are running a product-specific campaign or one focused on educational content. By determining the goals of your initiative in advance, your e-newsletter advertising campaign can be maximized to deliver the results you are looking for.

4 Why E-Newsletter Advertising 4 E-newsletter advertising provides an effective, highly measurable channel to help you reach your marketing goals, including exposure, branding and engagement. With e-newsletter advertising as part of your marketing mix, you can connect with a targeted audience of industrial professionals while they are actively engaged in work-related research in their specific areas of interest. Subscribers use e-newsletters as a resource for timely information and to stay current with new technologies, product applications and suppliers during the buying process. There is a clear opportunity to motivate these readers to learn more about your company and products. You can use e-newsletter advertising to create exposure for new and existing products and offerings, promote resources like technical articles and product demos, and position your company as a thought leader. Whether your e-newsletter ad is product-specific or educational, you can drive targeted traffic to your website or other online destinations (such as a Product Announcement on Engineering360.com), increase your exposure, capture contact information and develop valuable engagement opportunities.

5 E-Newsletter Trends in B2B Industrial Marketing 5 Within the universe of marketing, e-newsletters are the most often used campaign among B2B marketers. Eighty-one percent of B2B marketers use e-newsletters as a content marketing tactic, according to joint research conducted by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. and 64% of B2B marketers rate e-newsletters as very effective/effective. Your target audience of engineers subscribes to an average of 4.4 digital publications, in contrast to 1.4 printed trade magazines, according to the 2015 Digital Media Use in the Industrial Sector research report from Media Solutions. However, your company s e-newsletter is not the only way to engage customers and prospects through marketing. You can also share your news, content and product information and build your brand and generate new engagement opportunities by advertising in targeted industry e-newsletters. Advertising in a reputable, recognized e-newsletter offers a number advantages for the industrial marketer seeking to get more out of marketing: You can reach a much broader yet still targeted audience. Contacts that you don t have in your own database and are otherwise hard to reach. Industrial professionals in new markets or regions you want to pursue. Motivated, engaged engineers who have opted-in to receive the publication. Someone else does the heavy lifting for you. The e-newsletter publisher handles database and list management, newsletter design and production, and sending and tracking. This can free you up to focus time and resources on other pressing marketing efforts. Customized reporting for measuring success and ROI. You can access timely reports that detail the results of your advertisement. With opt-in newsletters, you ll know who clicked on your ad and expressed interest in your content. You can benefit from integration with other digital marketing efforts. The right media partner will offer e-newsletter sponsorship by itself or as part of an integrated marketing program that may include tactics such as display advertising, content marketing, searchable catalogs, webinars, and more. This helps you create a stronger, more holistic marketing program highly targeted at the audience you need to reach.

6 Understanding the E-Newsletter Subscriber 6 E-newsletters are an ideal vehicle to get in front of a highly-engaged audience. Readers subscribe to and read e-newsletters on topics of interest to them to stay abreast of the latest industry trends and events, new product announcements, relevant technology developments, application ideas for products, research and development, career opportunities and more. Although they engage with your content and may be interested in your offerings, e-newsletter readers are not necessarily ready to buy right now. This is an opportunity to showcase how your product, service, technology or application will help readers become more efficient and effective with their own product development and processes, such as helping them move their products to market faster and gaining a competitive advantage. Subscribers read e-newsletters to be informed and gain knowledge. They can easily spot a sales pitch and will skip right over your ad if it s too salesy. Ads that are informative and educational the type of content subscribers are seeking are more likely to be read and generate higher clickthroughs.

7 Types of Advertisements 7 There are two main types of e-newsletter advertisements: educational and product-specific. Educational Educational ads promote white papers, technical articles, videos, webinars and other relevant content. They can help educate readers about your products or trends in the industry, while helping you build brand awareness and further establish your thought leadership position. Readers may not have an immediate need for what your company has to offer but could be learning more for when they do. Product-specific Product-specific ads help move readers along in the buying cycle and generate more engagement opportunities. They focus on a particular product s benefits and how it can solve a problem or help a reader do a job more effectively. Phillips 66 Lubricants uses an educational ad to promote a technical brief that showcases their knowledge and expertise, as well as their commitment to helping customers reduce costly equipment failures. The technical brief landing page features a contact form to capture inquiries and potential engagement opportunities. EMX Industries, Inc. is clear about what products are being offered in its headline and image. A direct call-toaction appears as a hyperlink at the end of the ad.

8 Organize Your Advertisement 8 When selecting the placement of your ad, higher positions typically generate the most activity. If you are running multiple advertisements, test the elements of your ad such as different headlines, copy, images and hyperlinks. Determine what combination generates the best results. Headline The headline of your ad is the most important piece of copy, as these words will determine whether a reader will simply glance over your ad or spend a moment reading the rest of your copy. Keep your headline short and to the point. Copy Your ad copy should emphasize the benefits of your product or offer. What s the value for your reader? What will they gain? How a product works may not be as important as how it will help your reader. If you include product features, make sure they align with a benefit. Your copy should also be easy to read. Short, simple sentences work best. Don t feel like you need to get all of your points into the copy. Instead provide just enough incentive for the reader to clickthrough to your Product Announcement, web page or other destination. At that point, you can delve deeper into the benefits of the product or value of the content. Clickthroughs can also be a way to capture contact information. If you give away too much in the copy, you may not get the click and the potential engagement opportunity may be lost. Include just a few of the most important benefits of your product. Hyperlinks As you plan your e-newsletter ad, you will need to determine the destination of the hyperlink in your copy. This should reflect the goals of your campaign. If you desire engagement opportunities, link to your Product Announcements on Engineering360.com as these provide reporting information in Client Services. If you seek to build brand awareness or thought leadership through an educational ad, then link directly to your content or landing page. Your link should also act as a call-to-action. What do you want your reader to do after viewing your ad? It should also be clear to your reader exactly what will come next. View a product demo video, Visit our website for more information, Order a product sample, or Download the white paper are good examples. You may also want to include a hyperlink in the body of your copy as well. If you differentiate these links in your tracking, you can analyze the performance of your links to determine the best placement within your ad. Images Images should work together with your headline and copy. If there is a disconnect in the reader s mind between the image and the text, the reader will move on. Intriguing (but not unrecognizable) images can help draw a reader s interest to your ad. Ensure that your images are clear. If a reader has to make an effort to figure out what your image is or says, they may skip the rest of the ad. Avoid graphs and images that include text as the words may not be legible. Unless your goal is corporate branding, company logos will not be the best use for an image in your advertisement. Readers who are unfamiliar with your company or don t recognize the logo may pass over your ad. Avnet grabs readers attention and draws them into its advertisement with a picture you may not expect to see in an industry-focused e-newsletter.

9 Tips for Writing Successful Ad Copy 9 Informative and engaging e-newsletter advertisements will compel the reader to take the next step in learning more about what you have to offer. With limits on space and word count, you want to ensure that your e-newsletter ad is working for you. Here are some tips. The first sentence of copy in this ad from Ford Fasteners, Inc. highlights the many years the company has been in business, which is a good way to show long-lasting reliability. The most important information of the product appear close to the top of the ad and the second text link ( for all your fastener needs ) gives a clear indication of what the reader will discover when the link is clicked. Know Your Audience As with any marketing initiative, understanding your audience is critical to the success of your campaign. For example, s Specs & Techs e-newsletter is broader in its coverage of the industrial space and attracts a large, demographically-mixed audience. Product- and industry-oriented titles are more targeted and have a base of focused subscribers who have a high interest level in the publication s content and advertisements. Understand who you want to reach with your efforts. Select the appropriate e-newsletter and draft content accordingly. Provide Value The most effective product ads are ones that offer value providing solutions to problems or showing how the product can help your reader do his or her job. For an educational ad, the offer should feature valuable content such as insights, how-to tips, new research or fresh analysis that is relevant to the reader s industry. Tell a Story Readers generally steer away from ads that read like advertising. Consider an ad that is editorial (more like a story) rather than a pure sales pitch. You can still provide value to your readers and generate clickthroughs. When telling a story, speak directly to your reader by using words like you and your.

10 How to Design Your Advertisement for E-Newsletter Readers 10 The readers you are looking to reach via e-newsletters are busy and skim headlines to find articles or advertisements that pique their interest. For your advertisements to be effective based on this behavior, they need to quickly grab a reader s attention. The best way to do this is through the ad s headline and image, which are typically noticed first by your readers and will determine whether they are interested enough to read more and click your link. Be persuasive with your headline and excite your audience by providing a solution to their problem. For example: Relieve your Stress over Bellows Design New Container Seals Resist Tampering Make Chemical Pumps Last Longer Each of these examples has provided a problem-solving benefit to the reader that may also save them time and money. You may want to try a headline that intrigues the reader by announcing a new product or free product offer. For example: Introducing our Newest Configuration of Bearings Complimentary LED Mount Sample Kit Whatever strategy you take with your headline, give your reader a reason to want to learn more. Be simple, unambiguous and straightforward. The text and image of your ad can then build upon the headline that has hooked the reader.

11 Activity Generated from E-Newsletter Advertisements 11 There are two main objectives when developing an e-newsletter ad driving engagement opportunities for your products and offerings and building awareness about your company and thought leadership positioning. You can either drive engagement opportunities for your products and offerings or you can build awareness about your company and thought leadership positioning. The tactics involved are distinctly different, as are the activities generated by the diverse types of ads to achieve these objectives. Engagement Opportunities Product-oriented advertisements tend to generate more engagement opportunities because the readers are showing a strong interest in the message or offer to pursue the links and learn more. If your ad features a product tied to a Product Announcement on Engineering360.com then link your ad to the Product Announcement for the most intelligence about the contact. All contacts generated from e-newsletter advertisements will be listed in Client Services, a suite of comprehensive measurement tools that allow you to review your campaign performance in real time. Using s reporting dashboard, you can access up-to-date information about your engagement opportunities then adjust your program to achieve the maximum results. Awareness If your goal is to build brand awareness or thought leadership with general copy around content such as a white paper or video, link directly to the offer or landing page. You can use your own link tracking by providing URLs that incorporate your campaign variables.

12 Conclusion 12 Your prospects and customers are utilizing e-newsletters as an information resource at every stage in the buy cycle, making this the ideal channel to promote your products and services or thought leadership positioning and an excellent source of contacts and engagement opportunities. Your company can clearly benefit from the potential exposure and awareness generated through an e-newsletter advertising campaign. But to be successful, you must use best practices to create well-designed and clearly written advertisements that engage readers. To be effective: Know your audience. E-newsletter advertising should be approached like all other marketing campaigns and that begins with understanding the wants and needs of your audience. Provide value. Readers are interested in solutions to their problems or ways to make their jobs easier. This can be a product or it can be new research or analysis on a topic that impacts their work. Tell a story. Subscribers sign up for e-newsletters for timely information and to stay current on products and industries. You can provide the most value and accomplish your goals with an ad that reads like editorial content rather than a sales pitch. Your e-newsletter ad should: Contain a clear and concise headline. Short is sweet when it comes to e-newsletter advertising headlines. Emphasize the benefits and not necessarily the features of your product or offer. What will your readers gain? Use hyperlinks effectively. Links should reflect the goals of your campaign by directing readers to an action that creates an engagement opportunity, or to additional content for building thought leadership and awareness. Feature an image that complements your ad. A picture needs to work hand-in-hand with the headline and copy. If it doesn t, the reader will move on. Be intriguing but not unrecognizable. By following these steps, you will help encourage readers to take that next step and clickthrough on your call to action and create highly measurable engagement opportunities for your company.

13 About Media Solutions 13 delivers the single source for trusted, expert engineering content, information, insight, tools and community for engineers and technical professionals across multiple industries and disciplines. An engaged community of more than 8 million industry professionals rely on as a trusted resource at every stage of the research, product design and purchasing process. For industrial marketers, our mission is to provide comprehensive digital media solutions that connect companies with their target audience and generate unparalleled results delivering measurable and actionable awareness, demand and engagement opportunities at all stages of the buy cycle.

14 IEEE ENGINEERING360 BEST PRACTICES FOR MORE EFFECTIVE E-NEWSLETTER ADVERTISING For more information about Media Solutions: Visit: Call: Fax: Tech Valley Drive Suite 102 East Greenbush, NY IEEE.