The power of email is not likely to dwindle anytime soon. Email marketing campaigns are cost-effective and have a high return on investment (ROI) when the right design and messaging are used.

According to the Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) National Client Email Report 2015, email has an average ROI of £38 for each £1 spent.

While it is not the only marketing channel you should use, email is a vital element of engaging with your potential customers. Therefore, it’s important to get it right.

So how can you power up your B2B email marketing campaigns?

1. Start with data

Data is central to the success of your B2B email marketing campaigns. It’s crucial to ensure that you are targeting the right people, at the right time. If you do the opposite, you run the risk of being identified as a spammer and having your email moved straight to the recipient’s trash folder.

4 ways to power up your B2B email marketing campaigns https://t.co/q105q7dYWf pic.twitter.com/69ycMT4cCy

— Marketscan (@Marketscan) September 9, 2016

Therefore, before hitting send on an email campaign, it’s best practice to review your database. B2B data decays at a rate of 35 per cent per annum, so if you haven’t examined your records in a while, it’s likely that there could be “dead” leads and goneaways among them. There are various reasons why data may no longer be relevant. People drop out of the buying process; individuals change roles at work or leave their company altogether; organisations close down or move to new premises.

Similarly, some of your records may be “dirty” – for instance, if they are incomplete, duplicated, or were obtained unfairly. Your database should be cleansed to remove any data that falls into these categories.

And, importantly, you should also make sure that you are targeting the right people – those who will genuinely benefit from your product or service. Even the cleanest data is of little use if it contains information about the wrong people.

Having ensured that your database is in an optimum condition, you can send out your carefully-crafted email campaigns with confidence, safe in the knowledge that you have greatly improved the chances of a high response.

2. Implement personalisation

Once you know you are reaching out to the right people, you can up the ante in your approach. Done in the right way, personalisation makes the recipient feel valued, without descending into intrusive territory. So opening your email with “Hi Sam” is great; following this with information about the person’s location and background is probably taking it too far.

According to HubSpot’s 2014 Science of Email Marketing Report, using first name personalisation increases your clickthrough rate from about 5.8 per cent to about 7 per cent. The recipient is more likely to feel that the content you are offering them is something that will benefit them if it is addressed to them directly.

3. Segment your contacts list

Different sections of your database will be more responsive to different messages. By segmenting your database, you can send more relevant emails to your recipients.

There are numerous ways to divvy up your contacts lists, so it’s really a case of doing what’s best for you. For instance, you might tailor your email marketing campaign according to your buyer personas or the role your recipients hold within their organisation.

4. Analyse the results

Email is one of the easiest marketing channels to analyse. Three key metrics to measure include:

• Delivery rate
• Open rate
• Clickthrough rate

You then use this data to inform your next campaign. Is your delivery rate disappointing? This could be an indication that you need to go back through your database with a fine-toothed comb to ensure it’s spick and span and free from dirty records. Or it could be the case that you are targeting the wrong market via your campaigns. Is your open rate low? Perhaps you need to make your subject lines more compelling. And is your clickthrough rate not as high as you might expect? Reconsider the wording of your calls-to-action and ensure that they are relevant to the content of your email.

Email marketing remains a powerful tool in your marketing toolbox. And the more powerful your campaigns, the better your results will be. While the content you offer is of high importance, the way you structure your campaigns matters enormously too. So use the right data, personalise your emails and segment your contacts list and, of course, analyse, analyse, analyse.