Top Email Marketing Guidelines for Distributors

Time to check your email

In real estate, there is a saying that “location is everything.” For digital marketing, an appropriate phrase is “timeliness is everything.” However, once you arrive at the right time, you must have something relevant to offer. Therefore, two of the most important tenets for effectively marketing to your audience are relevance and timeliness.

If your target audience is engineers, your job is more complicated than most other marketers. Why? For one thing, many engineers would rather engage with an electronic component, circuit board, or piece of test equipment as opposed to another person. And a technical manual or spec sheet is often more enjoyable than a good conversation.

However, an opportune time for connecting with an engineer is during their periodic review of messages in their inbox. This is best accomplished by following effective email marketing guidelines for distributors that target your audience where they are, deliver exciting and relevant content, and speak their language.

The Best Email Marketing Guidelines for Distributors

What specific steps can I take to best target and engage engineers through email marketing as a distributor? The answer is to follow the email marketing guidelines for distributors given below.

The first critical attribute of any digital marketing strategy is defining and engaging with your audience. Sales data and other customer metrics are key resources for understanding your audience personas. To optimize engagement, it is necessary to know where to find your audience, what they are searching for, and how to communicate effectively with them.

Know Where to Find Your Audience

For many years, marketing was based on the “if you build it, they will come” model. This worked because relatively few media outlets and markers could focus on their presence(s). Those days; however, are rapidly disappearing. This reality places the burden on the distributor to know where engineers are that can use or may have an interest in their products.

Today, effective marketing to engineers necessitates you embrace marketing over the internet.

The many facets of digital marketing.

As shown above, there are several locations in cyberspace where you can engage with your audience; such as on social media platforms and other organic SEO channels, which are tremendous for driving new traffic to your website – if done correctly. However, after connecting with an engineer, one of the best ways to convert or keep them as a customer is through timely and relevant email marketing.

Know What Your Audience is Looking For

Sometimes, knowing what engineers are looking for might seem like peering through a crystal ball. And you may ask, how do I know which engineers would be interested in my components and/or electronic components? Valid concerns. Yet, there are ways to become familiar with what engineers are currently interested in.

For engineers that you have engaged with previously – as a previous customer, a content reader, etc. – one way is to simply ask them. For example, you can require that a short questionnaire be completed to receive specific content, such as information on new products, product types, or industry trends.

Completing an online customer survey

Another effective method to ascertain what an engineer is interested in is to know and have a presence in the top electrical engineering communities online. These forums typically serve as a source for data, information, and design help for some engineers, a hub for networking for others, and a place to provide product information for companies and distributors. However, it is important to establish yourself and gain the trust of the engineers that visit these sites.

Know How to Communicate With Your Audience

Knowing where to engage with engineers and what they are interested in is very important for forming relationships and partnerships that may support your brand for years to come. And these partnerships are built on trust and the success of interactions with you. For some engineers, the quality of your product(s) is paramount. For others, support and customer service are most important. Still, others will assess you on your conversations, including written content, through email marketing.

As a group, engineers are technically focused and place a premium on using their mental time expenditures efficiently. This is known as the engineering mindset and being aware of its major facets can be very helpful to you when writing content for them. For example, condescending interactions will not be well-received. On the other hand, demonstrating an understanding of the terminology and pain points when designing circuit boards and electronics systems will likely help as it demonstrates that you are knowledgeable and/or are willing to gain some competence about what they do.

Employing the email marketing guidelines for distributors above as the core of your campaign to find, engage and keep engineers will be a great asset to your digital marketing campaign, and if done correctly will pay tremendous dividends for your company.

Discover how Ultra Librarian helps manufacturers. With services and resources tailored to streamline CAD creation and amplify part downloads, Ultra Librarian empowers manufacturers to boost productivity and drive part downloads. By leveraging these tools, manufacturers can achieve greater success in today’s competitive market landscape.