Most B2B marketers (including eMagine) rely heavily on email marketing for lead nurturing during our lengthy sales cycles.  Most of us therefore worry about our unsubscribe rates …and should worry even more about the generally larger group that isn’t reading our emails, but doesn’t even bother to unsubscribe.

There are many reasons for this, but writing on his B2B Lead Generation blog, Brian Carroll suggests that the biggest reason is relevance …or lack thereof.  And the biggest reason for that is taking the easy route of sending the exact same message to everyone, ignoring all the data we’ve collected on them.  By contrast, we should be sending more tailored emails, segmented by our prospects’ known industry, company size, stage of the buying cycle, job function, and more.  The more of these we can incorporate, the more relevant our emails become to each prospect.

Still more good points/resources in Brian’s piece …as always, well worth a read.

According to MarketingSherpa/ADTECH research, 44% of marketers believe that email marketing to their house lists has “great ROI”.  So you want to do as much as possible to keep your list names from being in the 69% that either “occasionally” or “frequently” unsubscribe from opt-in lists, according to Epsilon and ROI Research data.  The biggest reasons (per the same survey)?

• 67% – Irrelevant content
• 64% – Receive too frequently
• 50% – Think address being sold
• 48% – Don’t recall signing up

We found that brief research summary in a June 17th piece in eMarketer’s free newsletter.  The moral of the story seems pretty clear:

• Don’t email content that you’re not sure your readers will find useful.
• Avoid a too-frequent blast schedule;  weekly – if not every other week – is probably about max for B2Bs.
• Don’t use a shady or disguised opt-in process, and do reassure your subscribers that “your address is safe with us.”