Email Marketing – How to best use it for B2B Marketing

No matter what business you are trying to promote having a clear objective and knowing your target audience is critical. An objective could be lead generation, increasing brand awareness, launching a new product or service or nurturing existing customers.

Email marketing is a versatile marketing strategy that can help achieve both the above objectives. Brand Research 2019 shows that email marketing is at the least, 40% more effective in lead generation than social media*.

Email still emerges as the quickest and most cost-effective way of communication, especially for B2B marketing. If your customers are in the B2B technology space, they probably spend more time on email then they do on social media or blogs. This attention might be moving towards social but most social sites are blocked by firewalls in offices. Hence, email is still the preferred channel for outreach campaigns.

B2B Email Marketing –Is your email compelling enough?

All of us receive promotional emails in our inbox. Some are annoying, some interesting and some compelling, relevant and leave an impact. How can you write a compelling b2b marketing email that leaves an impact? The answer is simple but often ignored.

To create an impactful email, consider the objective and target audience.

First thing to consider is the copy. Is your message resonating with your target audience? The only B2B marketing email I remember opening recently said “Are you continuously managing a list of tasks and never getting to the end of it? Here’s an excel template that helps you priortise your tasks for the day and get more done.” The email hit my pain-point and I reacted immediately by downloading the template.

If it’s a lead generation email, how do you want your target audience to react or engage? Think about a call to action that encourages them to react the way you want them to. Again, thinking about the above example – the call to action in the email was simple, but very visible as a button and the form wasn’t very difficult to fill. The template that I downloaded was actually quite handy and I still use it to date.

The importance of email marketing for B2B

• Not all promotional emails end up unopened, transferred to trash folder or spam. If you have a strongly analyzed target audience, there is high chance your mail will be opened, CTAs addressed and even forwarded to people of “social cluster”, thereby, creating a strong network of prospects.

• The return on investment through email marketing is higher than that earned through conventional marketing strategies.

Email Marketing Strategies to Implement

Marketing through email is effective as nearly 87% business professionals depend on mails for business related communications and hence the B2B mails have 47% higher CTR (Click Through Rate) than that of B2C mails. So, to implement the email campaigning successfully, here are a few tips to remember –

• Determine The Clients And Their Requirements

Unlike in B2C marketing where clients are prone to be whimsical and indulge in choosing products or services often irrationally, in B2B marketing, the transaction is between business leading clients who are clear about their requirements and choose rationally. The customer base should consist of companies or bodies utilizing your service or product to create their products, companies using products for secondary tasks or office automation, government bodies or educational institutions whose requirement matches your business and of course the reselling companies or individuals like wholesalers and brokers.

• Email Header Should Be Catchy And Sensible

Email marketing effectiveness lies significantly on how you present your products and services through the mail and that is where the requirement of a catchy header or banner comes. Marketing is all about catching attention among hundreds of other promotional emails and for that your header should properly address what the client needs but in a catchy and compact way because none likes a cluttered header. You can also place your company logo here to be easily recognizable from the rest.

• Content Should State Value for the Client

Firstly, the email subject should be easily understandable so that the recipient is urged to open the email and it is marked as ‘important’ rather than spam. However, do not depict the whole thought on the subject line; leave something for the client’s imagination! You can even add a media file with the mail to brew more curiosity and do not forget to put an emoji so that it stands out among other mails.

Once the title and subject is decided, a perfectly written content should be there for the client. Relevance with your company, unique inputs and often tricks and tips, question-answer should be included so that not only the new customers get intrigued but also the existing customers never lose interest. Unique, high-quality and compact content stating all the necessary details (often with heading, sub-heading, bullets etc) in comprehensible language always perform better.

• Authentication Of Domain Is Important

Your email marketing would fail if your domain is not authenticated as in most such cases, the mails go straight to spam folder. If your mail is authenticated, the opening rates will increase along with the click rate. You should also select the best ESP or Email Service Provider for delivery service of the mail.

• Deter From Addressing To CXO

Your promotional emails are not always approved by the CXO’s or busy personnel. Besides, in case of wholesalers, entrepreneurs and small businesses who control have their hands in all business processes, larger businesses have dedicated people responsible for dealing with sales enquiries. Write your email with your recipient in mind, imagine them and their work life as vividly as you can. This will help you create a message that is relevant.

• Concentrate On Cross-Selling

In case you offer more than two types of services, you can segment the mail list according to requirement and interest level. While generally you send product related mails to respective segments, in cross selling strategy, you need to send one different product related mail to the segments so that they are aware of all your products and services. This also works great in case you are advertising special promotions because the more people learn about promotional offers, more they consider availing those offers.

Apart from the above tips, timing is of essence! Especially if you are giving a deadline of any offer or inviting for an event, time yours emails to give your prospects enough time to respond.

At Predictable Marketing, we can help incorporate the perfect email marketing strategy in your overall lead generation plan or as a standalone campaign. We can help design email campaign sequences to achieve your objective whether that’s brand awareness, new lead generation, reselling, up-selling or simply nurturing existing customers. Get in touch to design your email marketing campaign today. We also offer a free review of existing email marketing campaigns. Contact us to book a date for the review.