Let’s make one thing crystal clear: email is still one of the most efficient channels for B2B sales in 2022. You can also make contacts through telephone, pay-per-click advertising, and D2D sales, but according to Hubspot and SalesLoveMarketing, most leads can still be generated via email. You can reach thousands of people, start a conversation and pitch your service to them with ease.
Still, there are a couple of issues with sales emails that limit their successful opening or arrival to recipients. From our own experience and additional research, the most usual issues that affect the success are:
An email content
You may always be tempted to add something to a letter to add some extra value to it. But adding too many visuals, GIFs, or links to your professional email might lead it straight to the recipient's junk box. Keep that in mind because there’s one truth that always works: the clearer, the better.
A wrongly chosen target group
The main goal of your email is to capture the attention of your potential target group and sell your service. But precisely, the opposite might happen if you haven't set up your clients exactly. You may be sending emails to the wrong people that are not interested in the subject. They might even open the letter, but ''don't-write-me-again'' rate will stay exceptionally high.
The typical problem
And last, but not least: the technical issues. To begin with professional and profitable B2B sales through email in your company, you'll need a
1. Email Automator;
2. Mailservice;
3. A domain.
And even then, no one can guarantee that all of your emails successfully pass the "filters "and that all the email recipients will receive your messages. There may be more than one different concern, and now let's look and find a solution to some of the most common technical issues you might also endure on your way.
Issues with DMARC
What is DMARC? Domain-based Message Authentication or shortly DMARC can help you protect your domain from different attacks, scams, or other additional threats. But if you encounter various obstacles, it can be not very pleasant.
One of the most common problems with DMARC is Compliance failure meaning that both SPF & DKIM validation tests failed. Because of that, your high-valued sales emails might not reach the target client as inboxes cannot confirm the legitimacy of your email. What can you do? If there isn't a clear overview of the problem, you can first check the current situation with MX Lookup Tool.
SPF failures
DMARC extends to further mechanisms like Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM). So when you have tried and done everything above, but the problem remains, it is wise to check their settings, too.
If the SPF fails, there are ways to tackle this problem.
1. First, you can check the servers and services in your SPF record.
2. Analyze if you have an existing SPF record.
3. Guarantee that all servers and senders that send an email for your domain are included in your SPF record.
4. Renew your SPF record with any new sender information.
Problems with DKIM
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is an email security standard. As with SPF and DMARC, there can also be some issues with DKIM that fail your successful email sequence. So, what are the problems? Often might happen that DKIM will fail the check. The possible reasons for that to happen are:
1. Signature domain do not align with the sender (Header Form) domain;
2. DNS zone is unavailable for lookup;
3. DKIM key might be too short.
Being placed on the blacklist
The blacklisted status can be very annoying because that again limits your chances of attracting your target group's attention. Necessary letters cannot reach your clients because your IP or domain has been placed on a blacklist. In addition, it affects reputation.
The easiest way to solve the problem is to know if the host has blocked your domain. For that, we recommend visiting websites like MXToolBox, DNSchecker, Barracuda, and others to check your status.
If you have, then one of the most efficient ways to get off the list is to write an email to your service provider or blacklist registry where your domain is listed (Barracuda for example), admit an issue, and secure that you won't be added to the list anymore.
In conclusion
B2B sales through email is an exciting topic that we will discuss further. Today we covered the technical issues that can affect your delivery. We will continue with the problems in the following articles. First, we'll go over the correct content of a sales email and later review the right target group's situation.
Stay tuned!
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