Recently we've been running a series of marketing audits for various conference companies and to be honest have been surprised to see that a lot of B2B email practices from 15 years ago are still being used today.
When we go through this audit process we try to share as much information as possible with the internal marketing teams with knowledge around best practices and new trends. 
So here is a really useful reading list of B2B email marketing tips we have shared with some of our network, so we thought why not share it with the whole wide world of events. It is really helpful.
Disclaimer: This is simply our list of bookmarks that we find extremely helpful. There is no commercial gain to us from this post. If any of the links in this post do not work please let us know at helloATbrightbullDOTcoDOTuk and we will make sure to fix it or replace it.
Subject Line 101
Hubspot’s “The anatomy of a 5 star subject line” is a cracking guide to the basics of killer subject lines, providing 10 tips from the ground work of timeliness and personalisation to more advanced related concepts such as optimised sender and preview text.
http://blog.hubspot.com/anatomy-of-5-star-subject-line-ht
The Stats That Tell The Story
We’ve done a series of blog posts on email marketing and subject lines inspired by the Adestra Subject Line Analysis report which is packed full of essential facts on keyword performance for different company types and sectors to guide your email strategies.
http://www.adestra.com/resources/reports/adestra-subject-line-analysis-report-2013/
Slip Past Spam Filters
We’ve all got our internal list of terms that we know are likely to trip spam filters, but can you remember 100 every time you write an email? This helpful list will give you a refresher course on the words to avoid and may even reveal a few you’d never thought you’d get caught by.
http://www.leadformix.com/blog/2013/09/top-100-spam-trigger-words-and-phrases-to-avoid/
The Ultimate Guide To Email
This list categorises a mammoth number (over 60!) blog posts on email marketing packed with tips and how-to guides from eConsultancy. The list is helpfully split up by sub-topic e.g. infographics so you can quickly locate resources for the area you are stuck with.
37 Email Copywriting Tips From The Industry Gurus
Copyblogger is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to improve their marketing communications and sharpen up their messaging. It’s hard to pick just one post but this smart list of 37 quick and easy tips has it by a nose.
http://www.copyblogger.com/37-email-marketing-tips/
“Hi: Check This!”
What can we learn from the spammers? “Crafting an Effective B2B Subject Line” on the Clickz web portal explored why some spam subject lines are so outrageously successful and what we ethical marketers can learn from these internet parasites to improve our own marketing. An old post but has the key info in it, some are still valid today.
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2139024/crafting-effective-b2b-subject-line
10 Tips On Smart Email Strategy
UK website Startups provides some savvy tips for small businesses to make sure you are set up for success, including tips on choosing the right email provider etc. which is often assumed to be taken care of by many articles.
http://www.startups.co.uk/email-marketing-ten-tips-for-a-successful-campaign.html
Smart Tips On Database Building & Email Marketing
This huge database of articles provides a number of useful tips and resources, our favourite of which is this list that covers some interesting compliance and database tips that whilst not the most glamorous, will at least keep you from falling foul of the data protection laws.
http://email.about.com/od/emailmarketingtips/Email_Marketing_Tips_Tricks_and_Secrets.htm
Email Marketing Tips To Your Inbox
Most of the email providers you might use will have a blog where they publish case studies and tips; two of our favourites are those by AWeber and MailChimp:
Clickz for Clicks
This is a good database of articles on email marketing, they only publish a new one every month or so but it’s worth the wait!
http://www.clickz.com/category/email/email-marketing-best-practices
Benchmarking-ly Brilliant
The lovely people at MarketingSherpa produce an annual email benchmarking report that gives you a 26 page compare and contrast perspective on your own email marketing stats.
Here is an excerpt of the report:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/data/public/reports/benchmark-reports/EXCERPT-BMR-2013-Email-Marketing.pdf
You can download the full copy here:
http://www.meclabs.com/training/publications/benchmark-report/2013-email-marketing/download
More Email Stats and Behavioural Insights
This time from the guys at ExactTarget who produce an annual piece of research and insight on people’s email behaviour, especially useful because they also look at it in relation to other digital channels like Twitter and Facebook.
The executive summary contains really good highlevel info:
http://image.exct.net/lib/fe641570776d02757515/m/2/SFF2013ExecutiveSummary.pdf
But here you will have a list of all their reports which is pretty extensive:
http://pages.exacttarget.com/sff
Final Thoughts
Knowing the theory is a good first step to improving your email marketing, but the experience and real figures you generate as a result of creating campaigns is where the true value is created. Testing and continuous incremental improvements are essential for a healthy on-going email marketing programme; ultimately it does not matter what statistic or benchmark exists out there the best possible benchmark is your own.
Do you have any comments?