Industrial email marketing may not get the same attention and love as it used to because of social media. However, don’t abandon it because it is still highly effective when targeting engineers and technical professionals.
I’m not suggesting that you ignore social media in favor of email marketing, especially if you are trying to engage with younger engineers, those that are 35 years or younger. The two can coexist very nicely as part of your industrial content marketing strategy.
Email newsletter is the most popular content format used by manufacturers in the past 12 months. That comes from the research report, Manufacturing Content Marketing—Insights For 2021 published by the Content Marketing Institute. There is a good reason for its popularity.
“Of all the content types they use, manufacturing marketers said videos (pre-produced) (21%), virtual events/webinars/online courses (19%), and email newsletters (13%) produced the best overall content marketing results for their organization in the last 12 months.”
Engineers are hungry for good information that is technically accurate and relevant to their work-related challenges. However, challenges still remain in reaching and engaging with them. This is a discerning audience who’ll ignore your emails if you don’t win their trust with good content.
Here are the findings from the report, “2021 State of Marketing to Engineers” published by GlobalSpec and TREW Marketing.
Industrial email marketing is not just for pushing out content to your audience. It is just as effective when it comes to your audience contacting your sales team.
You are probably already aware of the fact that most industrial buyers prefer to remain anonymous almost 70% through their buying journey. Reaching them is not an easy task when they don’t want to talk to your sales team.
When they are ready to engage, over half the engineers prefer to use email over any other form of communication. That’s another finding from GlobalSpec’s report.
The quality of your email list has a huge impact on the success of your email marketing campaigns. It is a fact that in-house lists outperform other sources of lists. Over the years, you’ve probably collected emails from various sources—newsletter sign-ups, trade shows, networking, and existing prospects and customers.
People get promoted at companies and/or move to other jobs. You need to regularly check the hygiene of your email list. Do a “merge-purge” of your list to keep it current.
One common problem I’ve come across with industrial companies is the size of their lists. They tend to be small and/or stale. Needless to say, growing your list with new subscribers should be one of your goals of industrial content marketing.
Engineers are more willing to give up their contact information in exchange for what they consider valuable information. What can you offer engineers to persuade them to fill out your registration form? This chart from the GlobalSpec report will answer that question for you.
Lead nurturing is an important component of industrial email marketing, especially in long and complex sales cycles that are typical in industrial sales. This is a topic unto itself for another post or two. I have published a few posts on lead nurturing that you’ll find here. You can also find plenty of good information from HubSpot and other Marketing Automation companies.
You don’t have to go it alone. Consider using e-newsletters from reputable industry portals and publications. Many of them publish several niche newsletters that can fit your exact needs.
There are several advantages to this strategy.
The only caveat is that you don’t own those contacts until someone visits your site after receiving your email and signs up for a content download or some other call to action.
If you think all you need to do is blast out emails promoting your products/services, think again. The old-fashioned “batch and blast” industrial email marketing just won’t work, especially if you are considering renting an email list.
This post should provide a good overview of how you can use industrial email marketing to work more effectively for generating high-quality leads.
Let’s chat to determine if this will be a good fit for both of us. It will be a friendly conversation to get to know each other better, not a high-pressure sales pitch.