How SEO & PPC Can Help Build Your Email Marketing List

The biggest driver of leads for the B2B marketer? Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed by BtoB Magazine said email marketing was the online channel that contributed the most qualified leads to their businesses, according to a recent eMarketer article.



While social media and PPC (SEO was conspicuously missing from the survey) were also top lead sources, this type of logic rings true for many of the B2B organizations we work with as well. Website search presence undoubtedly brings lead opportunities into the sales funnel, but email invitations for more qualified content strategies such as webinars, events, and trade shows are likely to close the deal as well.

It’s difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. The eMarketer article indicates that 59 percent of those surveyed view lead generation as their greatest online marketing challenge. With that pressure in mind, it’s also difficult to move away from the strategies that continue to work well.

Instead of bucking the trend, B2B search engine marketers should work toward aligning their goals with what has worked well for their organizations. In this case, building the email marketing database.
Here are three practical steps tying SEO and PPC initiatives to the continued development of the email marketing list.

Make Email Subscription a Conversion Benchmark

There are several potential metrics B2B marketers can use to benchmark an SEO program. While B2B organizations naturally gravitate to the desire to acquire sales ready leads, search engine marketers need to lead the effort in developing a spectrum of lead opportunities from an SEO program.
While email subscription will probably not lead to an immediately qualified sales prospect, setting goals in coordination with email acquisition sets the stage for more effective conversion attribution in SEO campaign evaluation.

Measurements to consider:

• Growth in overall email information and the quality of email address details
• Conversion rate of email acquisition at the page level and by keyword strategies

Create More Visibility to Email Subscriptions in Page Templates

Landing page optimization is a critical component of any search engine marketing initiative. Consider supporting primary conversion goals with an opportunity to acquire email subscriptions as well. Places B2B search engine marketers could consider optimizing for email as a secondary conversion include:

• Below the primary form submission
• In utility navigation
• Confirmation page messaging

Places where email subscription could be considered a primary conversion opportunity include:

• Blog and blog post navigational stream
• Social media assets
• As additional correspondence in email and traditional marketing collateral
• Mobile applications

Contact AdWords About the Communication Extensions Beta

Not widely adopted and hard to find in terms of (ironic) communication, the AdWords communications extension beta could become another way to drive email registrations for the B2B organization.
Via this support thread on Google AdWords:

“Currently, the communication extentions are tested by the team on a small portion of selected accounts. However, if you’d like to participate in beta testings, you need to email/call the support team, provide details about your account and submit it. ”     Read more...