Last week, Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade had the opportunity to lead a breakout session at #INBOUND17 in front of an awesome group of savvy marketers. And speaking of #INBOUND17 – what a week it was in Boston! Four days jam packed with content, tips, and tactics for inbound marketers to take home and apply to their strategies. This session (in addition to the week’s lineup of other incredible presentations) aimed to do the same by educating the audience on the power of employee email.
Did you know an average employee sends 10,000 emails a year to the people you care about most? All of these emails are opportunities for inbound marketers to distribute relevant content and drive conversions. Email is still the workhorse of digital marketing – and there are no other marketing channels that are as effective and efficient as employee email.
Bryan spoke to this point during the breakout session. He also showed the crowd how to put this owned channel to work for their inbound marketing strategies. It led to some great dialogue from the audience, as well as some examples and customer use cases.
For those of you who missed it, we wanted to make sure we had you covered! Here are four main takeaways from last week’s INBOUND17 presentation:
1. Marketers must take control of the employee email signature
As mentioned earlier, employee email is becoming an owned channel marketers can take advantage of – but how? Through the employee email signature.
Email signature marketing is a secret weapon for inbound marketers because it allows them to tailor content delivery on a human-to-human level. This boils down to two elements:
A) Signature
Let’s face it, each and every email your employees send out becomes an extension of your brand. This can lead to a positive or not so positive brand impression with your most important contacts, customers, and prospects. It’s important for the marketer to standardize this piece of real estate to ensure company-wide brand consistency. Now, marketing and brand teams have the ability to centrally control the format of the company’s email signature across the entire organization.
B) Campaign banner
Inbound marketers are also now including clickable call-to-action banners (located underneath the email signature) as a way to deliver 1:1 targeted content. These campaign banners can dynamically update based on the sender (employee groups or teams) or the recipient (specific accounts, industries, or regions).
2. Employee email can help drive more registrations for your events and webinars
We all know how much time, effort, and resources marketers pour into first-party events, regional dinners, and webinars. Why not use employee email to get the right people there?
A big bold CTA in each email sent can lead to additional impressions and clicks that will help drive more registrations, increase live stream attendance, and improve post-event follow up.
Want to see it for yourself? Check out how Terminus and Canvas are using it today for their event and webinar strategies.
3. Maximize the HubSpot platform with email signature marketing
Marketers can now easily connect their HubSpot account to Sigstr with static or smart lists, email templates, contact timelines, landing pages, and workflows. For example, pair your “INBOUND17 booth visitors” list with an email signature CTA that reads “Thanks for stopping by our booth! Learn more by scheduling a demo.” That way, when any of your employees send an email to a contact included in that list, you will know which CTA they will see in the email.
In addition to 1:1 targeting, you can also track conversions sourced from your employees’ email signatures in the landing page or sources report. This includes overall traffic, new contacts gained, and total number of customers won. For example, when people click on our newsletter campaign banner, it leads them to a HubSpot landing page and sign-up form. We can then see how many contacts have signed up for our newsletter from our employees’ email signatures.
4. This is a natural channel for account-based marketing
Need a quick and easy to get your team started with account-based marketing? Consider employee email. If you think about it, it’s the perfect channel to get the right content in front of the right people.
Assign email signature campaigns to specific contacts or accounts so they see relevant content that adds value to the relationship. Have a case study related to a specific vertical or use case? Include it in all emails sent to prospects with a similar profile. Personalized and relevant content leads to great things for sales and marketing teams!
Email is still a huge part of our lives. And every employee email sent presents an opportunity for true, authentic marketing on a 1:1 level. See how HubSpot is helping deliver on this mission or schedule a demo to learn more.
Thanks to the HubSpot team and all attendees for making this year’s #INBOUND17 event so awesome – see you all next year!
