Over the years, email marketing has evolved significantly. Advancements in audience targeting and automation have made it an even more powerful tool for delivering the right message at the right time. In the veterinary industry, Clinician’s Brief has led the charge in harnessing these advancements, excelling in identifying and targeting highly specific audiences based on behavior and demographics.
For B2B veterinary marketers, email remains a vital communication channel for both broad and niche marketing efforts. In this blog, we’ll explore strategies to optimize your email campaigns and identify key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure and enhance your email effectiveness.
Send Time Matters
Sending an email might seem straightforward, but as with everything in marketing, the details make the difference. Use these tips to boost your email engagement rates.
Vary Send Times
In the past, determining the best time to send emails was simpler. We’d send emails around lunchtime, early in the morning, or during other times when people predictably checked their email.
But COVID has disrupted these patterns. With veterinary clinics busier than ever and more roles shifting to remote work, finding reliable email consumption times is now challenging. When was the last time you heard a veterinarian having a consistent lunch break?
Since predicting email engagement times is tough, experiment with sending emails at various times of the day. Many brands stick to sending emails on the hour or half-hour, leading to a crowded inbox. Stand out by scheduling your emails at unconventional times, such as 8:38 instead of 8:30.
Try Weekend Sends
If your target audience includes practice-owning veterinarians or high-level decision-makers, consider sending emails on weekends. Data suggests that entrepreneurs, like private practice owners, are more likely to engage with emails over the weekend as they catch up on tasks.
Avoid Overloading Your Audience
We’ve all experienced it: subscribing to a list for a special offer and then receiving daily emails that we don’t need. Allow users to manage their email preferences so they can control the frequency of your messages.
To avoid overwhelming your audience, use targeted email campaigns instead of blasting every message to your entire database. This approach not only prevents email fatigue but also enables more personalized communication.
For more insights on strategic audience segmentation, check out our blog post, Quantity vs. Quality: Settling the Age-Old Debate on Email Marketing.
Leverage Automated Email
To ensure your messages are relevant and timely, implement automated email sequences. For instance, if a prospect visits your product page but doesn’t request information, automatically enroll them in a product education sequence.
Discover more about effective email nurturing sequences for B2B veterinary marketers.
Optimize for Opens
If an email lands in an inbox and nobody opens it, does it make an impact? No!
For email to work, your recipient needs to open it. Here are 4 factors that determine if your email stands out in recipient inboxes.
1. Subject Line
Craft concise subject lines to avoid truncation in inbox previews. Your subject line should spark curiosity and encourage recipients to open your email for more details. Complementary subject lines and preview text work best to entice the recipient. Emoji can spice up your subject lines and catch the eye, but use them sparingly to avoid looking unprofessional. 🌶️
Avoid deceptive tactics like using “FW:” or “RE:” in your subject lines. These tricks can annoy recipients and potentially harm your domain authority if they lead to higher unsubscribe rates.
2. Preview Text
Preview text, the snippet visible below the subject line, should enhance the subject line by providing additional context. This extra information helps recipients understand why opening the email is worthwhile.
3. From Address
Most people miss this one: You can customize your from address to provide recipients with more information about the content.
For example, instead of sending educational emails from “Your Brand Name” try “Your Brand Name Education” so that the recipient can tell from a glance that the content is educational, not promotional.
4. Technical Considerations
There are numerous technical reasons why your email may or may not get opened, so if you’re concerned about your email open rates, here are a few places to dig deeper:
Email Authentication Policies: In February 2024, Google updated its email authentication policies. Ensure you comply with these changes to avoid issues with Gmail delivery. If your open or click rates have dropped significantly since February, review and update your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC settings to align with Google’s requirements.
Email Domain Authority: Monitor your domain authority closely. A sudden increase in unsubscribes or high bounce rates may indicate issues with your domain’s reputation. Consider using a new email sending domain if necessary to reset your domain authority.
Spam Filters: If your emails are being flagged by spam filters, use a spam checker tool to evaluate and adjust your emails before sending them. This can help reduce your spam score and improve deliverability.
For more pre-launch email advice, check out our comprehensive pre-launch email checklist.
Nitty-Gritty Email Details
Once your email is sent and opened, your goal is to encourage the recipient to take action. Use these tips to optimize the layout and content of your email.
Calls to Action (CTAs)
You might be surprised how many emails are sent out without a CTA. If we don’t ask the viewer to take action, they won’t.
Place CTAs high in the email to catch the reader’s attention before they have to scroll. Test the placement of your CTA on both mobile and desktop to make sure the viewer doesn’t have to hunt for it.
Graphics
Appealing graphics can significantly boost your engagement. Illegible text embedded within a graphic can have the opposite effect.
Avoid placing important text, such as headlines or callouts, in images because you cannot control how small the image will render on a mobile device. If the most important text in your email renders in 5-point font on an iPhone, your viewer will not be impressed.
Mobile Experience
Most email is now viewed on a mobile device. Test your email on mobile devices or in simulators to ensure the mobile experience is good.
A/B Testing
A/B testing can help you optimize your open or click rate. If you are optimizing for opens, you’ll want to switch the subject line and preview text for your test.
If you want to test for clicks, keep the subject line and preview text the same and change the content of your emails for your test.
Descriptive Headlines
Make sure your headlines and subheads are engaging and clear. Veterinarians are busy, and your headline will be given a quick skim. If it’s confusing, wordy, or too vague, your viewer will quickly move on to the next email in their inbox.
Personalization
Personalize emails where possible with the recipient’s name, clinic name, geographic location, job title, or interests to increase engagement.
Testing
Always test your emails before sending them, even if everyone else on your team approves the content. Even with large reviewing teams, mistakes can sneak through. Here are the most common places to look for errors:
- Images: Ensure all images have the correct links and appropriate alt text.
- Links: Verify that all links work correctly. Reviewers often overlook this step.
- Technical Details: Double-check subject lines, preview text, and the from address, as these technical details can be easily missed.
- Recipient and Suppression Lists: Confirm that recipient lists and suppression lists are accurate to avoid sending errors.
Analyzing Your Email Performance
The KPIs of email are very different from what they were even just three years ago. While open rates are important to monitor, engagement rates offer more reliable insights. In 2021, Apple changed its privacy policies, making open rates a less reliable metric. In light of these changes, engagement is now the most crucial KPI for email.
Click rate has become the KPI to measure email engagement as the indicator of what percentage of people clicked on links in the email. Do not confuse click rate with click-through rate (CTR). CTR is a measure of how many people opened the email that clicked on content and, therefore, is impacted by the less reliable open rates.
Take a deep dive on measuring engagement in our recent article, Measuring Engagement: Strategy, Tactics, and Optimization.
Start Crafting Grade-A Emails
Whether you need a one-time email to drive quick activity, a full lead generation program with email tactics, or a highly targeted or behavior-based email nurturing program, the VetMedux team can help. Contact us today to see how adding email to your strategy can help you achieve your business objectives.