Email is a critical part of any B2B marketing campaign you design to nurture current partnerships and reach out to potential leads. It’s an affordable yet effective marketing strategy to promote your brand while providing impressive customer service.
Your team may have gone from one marketing approach to another. Perhaps some think that email is mostly considered old school. However, that is definitely not the case. Email campaigns are still the preferred form of communication for many companies. They use it to connect with existing and new customers as it offers an avenue for honest and concise conversations.
What is B2B Email Marketing?
Business-to-business (B2B) email marketing refers to an email marketing strategy that targets businesses instead of individual customers. According to statistics by Optinmonster, B2B email marketing was the most utilized marketing method in 2019.
B2B email marketing’s goal is to establish relationships with business managers, office managers, or anyone in a higher-level position with whom you want to create a connection.
B2B Email Marketing Statistics. Source: Optinmonster.com
These people decide whether to purchase your products or services. These individuals need to learn more about what you are selling to pique their interest.
B2B email campaigns come in different forms as recommended by “marketing experts.” Regardless of your chosen style of an email campaign, what’s most important is to convince companies that you have the best solution available for their needs.
B2B Email Marketing Tips
1. Think about your clients.
Your clients and target audience are the biggest determinants of successful and effective marketing. Think about nurturing this relationship by offering a free consultation or free trial option. You might even host an online conference about educational topics considered useful to their industry.
You might tackle the importance of having heat/click maps on their company’s website, for example. Heat maps provide valuable insights as to how customers behave on their site. This would surely be an eye-opener for helping understand their customers better.
Clients and customers visit multiple websites every day. Mostly, they will stick to brands that give them valuable information. Webinars, e-guides, manuals, or e-books will keep them interested and offer them undeniable value.
A simple email search for your subscribers can help you determine the addresses to which you shall be sending marketing messages. The email address research must also contain e-addresses of future customers.
2. Segment your audience and add influence triggers.
Different people subscribe to your newsletter. It’s critical to understand what cold, warm and hot audiences are. You can start by sending emails to people and monitoring their willingness to place an order. To calculate this factor, create various entry points into the sales funnel and track the actions of subscribers along with it.
Once you’ve determined what type of traffic the followers bring, add triggers.
For example, if one segment is already ready to place an order, focus on special offers and discounts. Tell the people who have just entered the funnel about the benefits of working with you. For those who are already familiar with your company, but are still thinking about buying, prove that your products deserve attention. Make your benefits stand out from your competitors.
3. Stay in touch with your customers.
Keep your audience informed by promoting content on your website through regular emails. Let them know what’s going on so that you give them the feeling of being important. Reinforce the idea that you are thinking about them.
A simple email with the latest events of the past week will boost engagement, especially if it’s in their area of interest. Including a free trial option. This also gives you the chance to show them what your service can do to them without having to buy first.
4. Create your content.
Make your content easy to read. Highlight the most important piece of information that you want to get delivered by using eye-catching fonts or bullet points. Keep it short and to the point. The style should be appropriately designed such that you convey professionalism and will be able to convince your target clients.
5. Make use of personalization.
Using personalization in your emails has proven to significantly improve engagement and conversions. The majority of us are visual learners, but we all process images 60,000 times faster than text. Go beyond “Hey [firstname]” and use personalized images that reinforce your call to action.
Types of Effective Email Campaigns for B2B
Welcome Emails
The first impression rule also applies to emails. Welcome emails get double to quadruple engagement rates compared to other types of emails.
Companies who send welcome emails get ahead of their competitors because subscribers who received welcome emails hours after subscription will likely stay on your list longer.
Types of Welcome Messages. Source: Pinpointe.com
Welcome emails can be in a form of email confirmation, “thank you” style, or traditional. These are all simple yet proven effective to provide long-term results.
Tutorials, Tips, and White Papers
Sending tutorials, tips, how-tos, and informational emails will give your subscribers ideas as to how they can benefit from your products or services. This also lets them get acquainted with how to use your products. A series of helpful videos or emails will likely convince them to trust your brand and will help with name recall when it’s time to shop.
Not all customers will be visiting your website all the time. You will do well to occasionally send relevant promotional videos through email.
Customer Stories
Share customer stories on your email campaigns for B2B marketing to highlight positive news about your brand. Since these stories are legit and come from your existing customers, they will serve as proof and an excellent source of brand credibility. Marketing efforts such as customer stories will stimulate subscribers to share their buyer experiences or stories, too.
Receipt Emails
Take advantage of email marketing by reinforcing your brand through receipt emails every time a purchase is completed. This strategy will also help you maximize your sales by adding promotional coupons or discount codes for future purchases. Discounts and promotions build loyalty, provide your business with a competitive edge, meet customer expectations, and attract new customers.
Re-Engagement Emails
Regain the attention of inactive subscribers through re-engagement email campaigns. Emails with catchy subject lines or attention-grabbing content like “we miss you” or “we are looking forward to you coming back” work well and tend to improve your response rate.
Losing your customers typically occurs because they are ignoring you and stop interacting with you or your brand. Renew their interest, stimulate engagement, and potentially win them back.
However, doing so one time is unlikely to yield a positive return. Instead, set up a re-engagement email sequence to give your customers several options for taking action. Email research for this part should not be that difficult as you only need to recheck existing subscribers.
Time-Sensitive Promotional Emails
Send enticing offers your customers cannot afford to refuse. Come up with a campaign containing exclusive deals, limited offers, or limited discount deals. Set an expiration date to persuade customers to act promptly. Make sure to add the time-sensitive information on the subject line so customers will open it as soon as possible.
Request Customer Reviews Emails
Request customer reviews that you can post on your website, your store, your social media pages, and third-party review sites. These establish proof that you are a legitimate business. They also build confidence among your existing and potential customers that your business is trustworthy.
When others see authentic customer reviews, they will most likely increase your clickthrough rates, website traffic, conversion, and sales.
Order Follow-Ups
Order follow-up emails provide great opportunities to reinforce your brand. They stir up interest to make future purchases and provide quality customer service.
Take advantage of the time to reach out to customers who are waiting for their orders to arrive. Communicate with customers regarding the details of their orders, particularly the shipment and delivery date. Offer updates on how they can get in touch if they have questions about their orders or anything that is related to customer orders.
Shopping Cart Reminders
This email campaign option is best recommended for online shopping businesses. According to statistics, the average cart abandonment rate across all industries is 69.57%.
Send reminders to customers who abandoned their shopping carts or have incomplete checkouts. Doing so might just fire up their interest to go back and complete the check-out process.
Research by The Baymard Institute. Source: Sleeknote.com
With any luck, you can recover abandoned carts and improve your e-commerce conversion rates.
Summing It All Up
B2B email marketing is not about waiting for customers to come to you. Instead, you need to demonstrate initiative and be proactive at finding effective channels to reach out to potential customers. You must also implement various marketing strategies to establish a strong online presence.
Gathering email addresses can be a daunting task when running a business. For that, you can consider using a professional email address search tool. These can help you conduct an efficient and reliable email search. Start looking for companies or contacts that you think might be interested in your brand.
