There are a variety of marketing tactics that could potentially go well with email, but social and mobile have more potential than most. Since we covered social integration yesterday, let’s focus today on how mobile can fit into your B2B email strategy. Dare I say it’s the perfect match?

Email and Mobile Marketing Similarities

When it comes to marketing, email and mobile have a lot in common. For example, both are geared for personal communications and highly targeted in nature. Furthermore, both are permission-based mediums. It is similarities such as these that make them an ideal pairing for the B2B marketer. Just like consumers, business professionals are moving across multiple communication platforms, with email and SMS being the messaging tools used by most. Savvy marketers who follow these professionals will have the ability to engage prospects through two-way dialogue that moves fluently from one channel to the next.

Figuring Out if You’re Ready

While there is certainly a lot of potential in bringing email and mobile together under one roof, this is not something you can jump into without sound planning. The first part of that plan should be making an attempt to understand how your target audience is using mobile devices. After all, branching out to mobile isn’t really justified when the bulk of your clients and prospects are still tethered to their desktops and laptops. Your targeting strategy must be on point in order to make the most of this integration plan and segmentation is the key to ensuring that your efforts are as focused as possible.

Perhaps your audience really is embedded in the mobile experience. Even when this is the case, there is criteria that can be used to drill down deeper into greater relevance. What smartphone platform are your clients and prospects using? Android powered phones are all the rage, but BlackBerrys and iPhones are also prevalent. Is everyone of your subscribers reading email on a mobile device? If one group is but another is not, it may be wise to have two different versions of your message, or even communicate with some of them via SMS to accommodate your audience as a whole. Get to know your audience so you will have the knowledge needed to create the segments that enable you to target them effectively.

It’s All about Relevance

Indeed, email and mobile are very much alike. In fact, their similarities can be seen all the way through the relevance factor. However, relevance is arguably even more important when mobile is involved. Send along an offer to one of your email contacts who just isn’t interested at the moment and they’ll probably just ignore you. Send the same offer to a mobile subscriber who is only interested in receiving timely updates and they may unsubscribe. As you can see, there is a very fine line here. Cross the wrong side and you could be doing a terrible disservice to your integrated marketing strategy.