The power of email as a lead generation tool for B2B marketing has been up for debate in recent years, especially since the rise of the superpower, social media.

However, the statistics don’t lie. Salesforce conducted a study which concluded 73% of marketers believe email marketing is core to their business (i). Email is here to stay. And for good reason.

Measurability

With only 66% of B2B marketers being able to prove ROI from their email campaigns(ii), I do wonder what’s happening with the other 34%.

Email is one of the most measurable channels. Integrated with tools such as Google Analytics to track online order forms, call tracking to track phone orders, not to mention the detailed analysis that comes as standard from most email platforms, email is the perfect tool for proving success.

Social Media vs Email?

The power of social media to engage with prospects and drive traffic, even delivering direct leads, cannot be underestimated. And we find that for appointment generation campaigns a multi-channel approach provides a 60% uplift on appointments.

Sure, social media you can measure the ‘reach’ of your tweets; create networks and clever hash tags. But with email, not only can you choose who you’re targeting; when you’re going to target them and also understand their engagement. You can most importantly measure your ROI.

In these challenging times, brand building is powerful, but companies in the B2B world need to see hard ROI.

 

So to make sure you measure the success of your email campaigns…

 

N.B. – This was originally published 15/03/2012 but updated to reflect current statistics and information