Welcome back to our series on Marketing Procurement: How to Sell Effectively to the Public Sector. In part two, we’re going to look at email marketing, specifically why it is the most effective marketing channel and how you can optimise email campaigns to deliver maximum ROI.
Understanding Email Marketing
Email marketing is a versatile tool that businesses use to promote their products or services, build brand awareness, and drive sales.
The beauty of email marketing lies in its ability to reach a large audience while maintaining a personal touch. Whether you’re looking to build brand awareness, promote a new product, nurture leads, or retain existing customers, email marketing can help you achieve your goals.
In today’s digital age, email marketing remains a cost-effective and efficient way to connect with your audience. With the widespread use of mobile devices, people are checking their emails more frequently on their smartphones and tablets. This makes email marketing an even more critical component of your overall marketing strategy.
Email Marketing for Public Sector Lead Generation
Email is the golden oldie of digital marketing. It was there at the beginning- heck, it was the beginning, and it’ll be there until the end of time. The reason is simple. It works. It does more than work, it delivers outstanding ROI. If you’re not leveraging email marketing yet, it’s time to come to the party.
Why are email marketing campaigns so effective?
Email marketing works because it’s a direct connection between you and the buyer. It’s a good start when you’re getting to know the key decision-makers (the ones holding the purse strings) in public sector organisations. We’re talking central government contracting authorities, like department heads or procurement team leaders. It also includes local government leaders, NHS procurement buyers, heads of care homes and higher education, housing associations, etc.
Once you’ve established a connection and demonstrated your value, email marketing is a great way to keep in touch without being in your face. It helps to build trust within the relationship, and it generates valuable data which can be used to improve your email strategy. It’s this ongoing refinement that boosts conversion rates, turns potential customers into happy clients, and keeps the return on investment high.
How to make it work
To get the most out of your email marketing strategies, you really ought to have an email marketing manager. A designer helps, but a marketing manager will do the job for small and medium-sized businesses with limited budgets. It’s important to have a professional on board because they can provide the whole shebang, including strategic design (logo, colour, fonts, images, links), compelling content, and accessibility on all digital and mobile devices.
When it comes to content, it’s a good idea to have your salesperson collaborate with a marketer to strike the right balance between sales spiel and marketing jargon.
Don’t worry if your business doesn’t have a salesperson. Marketers who specialise in the public sector know how to hit the sweet spot when writing persuasive email copy.
Copy is not always about driving sales, instead, it’s about providing value. This is especially true in the beginning of email campaigns, when you’re still establishing a relationship with decision-makers. The nature of the value depends on your goals, but something interesting and informative (like trends in demand for specific products) or entertaining (relaxed webinar about trends in general). Your marketer will have ideas about this.
Crafting Marketing Emails for Mobile Devices
These days, most people check their emails on mobile devices, so ensuring your email campaigns are mobile-friendly is no longer optional—it’s essential.
Here are some tips to ensure your emails are mobile-friendly:
- Clear and concise subject line: Your email’s subject line should be short and to the point, making it easy to read on a mobile device. A compelling subject line can significantly improve your open rates.
- Simple layout and font: Use a clean, easy-to-read font and a simple layout. Avoid clutter and ensure that your email is visually appealing on a smaller screen.
- Optimised images and graphics: Ensure that any images or graphics you include are optimised for mobile devices. Large images can slow down load times and may not display correctly on all devices.
- Prominent Call-to-Action (CTA): Your CTA should be easy to find and click on a mobile device. Use buttons or links that are large enough to tap with a finger.
- Test on multiple devices: Before sending out your email campaign, test it on various mobile devices to ensure it looks and functions as intended.
By focusing on these elements, you can enhance the user experience for your subscribers and increase the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. Remember, a well-crafted, mobile-friendly email can significantly boost your click-through rates and overall email marketing ROI.
Best Practices for Email Marketing Campaigns
Copy and design are only two elements in effective marketing campaigns. There are several other elements to consider.
Segmentation
Segmented campaigns involve splitting your target audience into groups, making personalisation much easier because everyone in the segment has similar goals, interests, needs, etc.
A segment could contain decision-makers relevant to your product B. Another could contain the buyers you collaborate with on social value project A. You could have segments based on geographic location or contract type – anything that makes sense to you and your operations.
Segmentation allows for more targeted communication, ensuring that your messages are relevant and engaging to each specific group.
Personalisation
Personalisation is key in modern email marketing. Email subscribers like feeling that they are of special interest to you and that you have their best interests at heart.
Using personalised subject lines can significantly increase open rates, as subscribers are more likely to engage with emails that feel tailored to them.
Things like using first names, providing news based on their interests, including vouchers to products they prefer, links to white papers, options to register for webinars. Anything that floats their boat.
Note: Not one of these things is salesy. You will send sales emails, but the core of email marketing is relationship building. Good relationships often translate into good sales, so the one feeds the other.
Compliance
Regulatory compliance underlies every single email marketing strategy. Non-compliance with the Procurement Act 2023, Data Protection Act, and other industry regulations can dump you in the spam folder or have all emails from your IP address blocked or worse, reported.
Your marketers should be aware of all regulations and requirements that govern public sector email marketing. Technically, this shouldn’t be your problem.
Using Market Intelligence & Data for Government Marketing
There’s marketing and there’s data-driven marketing. Only one of them provides valuable insights that enable you to be more strategic in your marketing campaigns. Data-based strategies give you more bang for your marketing buck, especially when it comes to email personalisation. Data-driven insights can help refine your email marketing strategies, ensuring that your campaigns are both effective and efficient.
Where does marketing data come from?
There are several sources, including:
- Customer data/interactions
- Analytics, including website and predictive analytics
- Social media
- Market research
- Competitor analysis
- Buyer research
There are some pretty nifty analytics tools on the market.
Delta eSourcing
Delta eSourcing has an All-New Analytics tool that builds on the previous version, making it smarter, faster, and more efficient. For instance, you can search and analyse frameworks, framework suppliers, Dynamic Purchasing Systems (DPS), DPS suppliers, and other buyers with data delivered to a customised, easy-to-use dashboard.
Tracker Intelligence
Tracker Intelligence is a genuine pioneer in the field of data tracking. It provides various data analysis tools, including award data, marketing intelligence, spend analysis, and market analytics.
The results of data analysis
The results of all this research provide deeper insight into customer behaviour, market trends (current and upcoming), and your competitors’ standing. Thanks to advanced software (AI and machine learning), data can be analysed and results delivered in real time.
This enables you to make decisions quickly in response to changing conditions. Not only are you more adaptable to change, but you can also increase customer personalisation in marketing emails, which enhances buyer relationships (or partnerships) and customer experience.
This leads to a higher ROI because happy customers tend to follow your lead all the way to your chosen conversion.
The data also enables you to refine your marketing campaign, enhancing optimisation and ROI. Understanding these insights is crucial for maximising email marketing’s effectiveness and achieving your marketing goals.
Note: This is an ongoing process. There’s always new data to collect, new A/B tests to run, and opportunities to enhance marketing performance.
End of Part 2
This brings us to the end of Part 2 in our series of B2G marketing procurement.
In Part 3, we’ll take a closer look at digital marketing in the public sector – it’s not always as easy as you might think.
Remember, elements like compelling email subject lines and personalized content are key to driving engagement and achieving success in your email marketing campaigns.
If you have any questions in the meantime or want to see exactly how Cadence Marketing can increase the effectiveness of your public sector procurement campaigns, book a free consultation with one of our marketing specialists today.
