Change Is Painful but Necessary

A great email system is one that focuses on deliverability (the system that makes sure your email can get through today's AI-powered firewalls and spam filters).

I have worked on many email platforms, both for myself and for clients. Some have offered free, while others are so much more cost-effective than the big boys. My latest platform was ActiveCampaign. I moved there because my biggest client was using it, and I needed a place to learn, test, and create best practices.

It is a world-class platform that does an exceptional job with email, both in design and list management. It has a built-in CRM, which is good, but I found Nimble's LinkedIn integration a far better option. Just like the industry standards (HubSpot and Salesforce), they have strengths and weaknesses, but that all comes with a pricey subscription model.

ActiveCampaign was costing me over $ 150 per month. That was fine for years until my client was sold, and they are shutting down all of their marketing. Another client is using Nimble as a CRM, which now offers broadcast email integrated into the system.

I find it to be a very reasonably priced CRM, but their email system is wonky and not their strength. (Just like how HubSpot is great for marketing, and Salesforce is a world-class CRM, but both of them lack on the other side of that equation. Nimble is no different.)

What follows is the journey of migrating my email list from ActiveCampaign to Nimble, and the steps universally needed to make great email systems work.

The Content Is King

Creating great messages but hoping that the internet will drive traffic to it because of your writing prowess and mad marketing skills is what we call in the industry “Wish Marketing.” Ads can help, but are an expensive option with often less-than-optimum results.

With that said, there are only two other ways to get people to see it… Send it via email or post it to social media. The problem with social media is that you are at the mercy of the platform and its algorithm, wishing your post gets shown to the right people at the right time.

Email, on the other hand, is a one-to-one communication. It can be personal and the most effective weapon in your marketing arsenal (if it is done right).

The main goal of all B2b marketing should be to start a human-to-human conversation. That said, your website is the most effective way to make that happen. If your content is being stored and shared from there, all roads (social, email, text) lead back to Nirvana. Simply counting on an email or social post to do that often leads to the Road to Perdition.

Email Is Queen

This is why email is mightier than the browser. The browser is where most people consume your content via blogs, webinars, videos, and more. Email not only delivers your content, but is also used for interpersonal communication (especially in business).

• Roughly 50–70% of employees' “on-computer” time is in communication apps (email + chat + meetings), with much of it in a browser UI, and the rest in “work” sites/apps or local tools.
• Microsoft says that the average employee spends 57% of their time in communication tools (meetings, email, and chat).
• For B2B/knowledge workers at work, limited surveys suggest roughly 1–1.5 hours of the workday is spent on social media (work + personal). That is only 5-7.5 hours per week.

That’s why in B2B, inbox placement is still one of the highest-leverage channels: it reliably occupies a quarter or more of a buyer’s work attention, while any individual website or app only gets a small slice of the prospect's or customer's attention.

The Road to Nirvana Is Bumpy

It's one thing to add someone to your mailing list; it's another to make sure that email gets delivered.

AI is making it harder to get into an inbox. The overuse of AI content is being flagged as spam. Also, some steps need to be taken to ensure the email address is verified and deliverable.

Although Active Campaign was delivering around 1000 emails from my list, when I exported that and imported it into Nimble, more than 40% of those were unverified or deemed risky.

It was a process. First, my CRM often has multiple emails associated with a contact. Nimble needs you to choose only one. (Same with ActiveCampaign.) I needed to go through my clients and vendors and decide which email was best. You can then use credits (or buy more) to verify that the chosen email is deliverable.

I found that Gmail had higher deliverability than our domain-based addresses (e.g., b2b-im.com). But even with Gmail, that does not mean your email was not redirected to a spam or promotions category.

I had to contact some people with legit email addresses who worked in AC and get a Gmail account to make it work on the new platform.

Then I exported my email lists from both AC and Nimble and compared them to find the ones that were not already in my CRM. Once that list was imported, I had to buy more credits (1000) to verify each email address for deliverability.

I then verified those additional emails — the ones that passed stayed, while the ones that failed (which were sign-ups from the email form and not people I knew) were deleted.

Needless to say, this was a tedious process that is 100% necessary if you don't want to get your email and domain blacklisted.

Undeliverable Is Not Uncommon

ActiveCampaign made it easy to identify both unsubscribed and bounced emails. That was a tool we have used for years to clean out email lists that were constantly ebbing and flowing, with new contact form emails and emails that stopped working because people were leaving or changing companies.

My biggest client had an email list of over 22,000 people. Using a program like Kickbox, we verified which emails were still valid. Then we used our Excel expert to create a very complex spreadsheet, which helped us remove non-relevant emails (such as ar@ and invoices@) and could remove them from the master list.

That master list went from 22,000 to 9,000 valid customers and prospects. Then every month, we removed bounces and unsubscribed emails, and added new customers and contact inquiries.

Yes, it was an expense and a process, but the ROI in new sales far outweighed the cost of maintaining a clean list.

Closing Thought

I am still in the process of perfecting the new email system, but it's worth it. Like a cobbler whose kids' shoes have holes in them, I am great at working on client email systems but slow to work on my own, and it was overdue.

Verification and maintenance are not as easy as set-it-and-forget-it, but they're more important than ever. We get sucked into believing that emailing is free since we don't generally pay for Gmail or Outlook, but broadcast email is a different animal altogether.

One last thing. Most email systems require double opt-in to add people to your list. I prefer sending an email saying you have been added to an email list with a button to unsubscribe. Opt-in messages often end up in spam, so they never see it, and you can't resend. If you do the direct route, if it bounces or they unsubscribe right away, it saves you time and headaches.

If they don't, you have permission to be a part of their inbox until they choose to unsubscribe. The road to Nirvana is bumpy, but when you get that sale, it's worth all the struggles of the journey.

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Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?

To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.