Let me tell you a story today. It’s a simple conversation between a deer and a rabbit. The point of narrating the story is straightforward- to help you learn a precious lesson relating to the significance of the right communication in B2B email marketing.

Okay, let’s get on with it!

The deer sent a message to the rabbit “On ships with finger chips.” The rabbit traveled to the harbor to share finger chips with its friend. Well, are you wondering what happened next?

The message was a warning from the deer. Instead of typing “Lions on ships with finger chips,” the deer mistyped it as “On ships with finger chips.”

The rabbit lost its life because the lions ate it. By following the incorrect message, the rabbit unfortunately died.

The term “lion” was omitted from the message, misleading the rabbit. This also led to mistrust, straining the relationship between the deer and rabbits forever.

Now imagine, you, the marketer, are the deer. The rabbit is your customer and the message sent is an email.

Many marketers lose their customers’ trust when it comes to B2B email marketing due to miscommunication. If a campaign communicates wrong messages, Customers lose their interest. Like the rabbit losing its life!

Hence, it is essential to put forth the right message to your customers. Communication forms the primary base of a buyer-seller relationship. You must implement some effective B2B email marketing techniques to win the customers’ trust and boost your business.

So, let’s discuss ways to make your B2B email marketing a flawless procedure.

What is B2B Email marketing?

B2B email marketing is an effective marketing technique used to sell commercial messages to the customers. You can direct your marketing campaigns to either your targeted audience or your prospects by sending them informational emails.

B2B email marketing is the traditional method of sending emails to enhance relationships with the customers. Improving relations here is indicative of acquiring new customers or strengthening the bond with the existing customers.

Now, let us look at some mind-blowing statistics:

• Every $1 spent you spent on email marketing, the Return on Investment (ROI) is $40. No other marketing channel comes even close
• According to a study conducted by McKinsey, an email acquires new customers 40 times more as compared to Facebook and Twitter
• A report released by MarketingSherpa revealed that more than 72% of B2B customers prefer receiving promotional emails as compared to 17% who prefer various social media platforms
• As compared to a tweet, an email has six times better click-through rates

(Source: Kuno Kreative)

Yes, impressive it is!

The fact that B2B email marketing is crucial for marketers to reach out to their audience, both potential and existing ones is evident. To ensure that you are going the right direction, you need to apply the most appropriate techniques for B2B email marketing. So…

Here Are 6 Effective B2B Email Marketing Ideas

Even though the fantastic prospects of B2B email marketing has been discussed several times before, there is still much to cover about it. Let’s unfold the six useful email marketing tips for the B2B email marketing.

#1 Using the basics of Content marketing:

It is true that you dream of fulfilling the right conversion target. However, it does not stop there. You need to give your customers something substantial to hold on to. To retain your customers, crafting the right content for your B2B email marketing campaign is pivotal. You need to make it an eye turner. It must gravitate your readers to it.

Also Read: 5 Ways to Fix Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is the core that acts as the gravitational pull to attract the customers and turn them into your sales prospects. But how to integrate the basics of content marketing with your email marketing campaigns? It would help if you worked on certain aspects when planning to implement successful B2B email marketing. They are:

1. Hook the audience in using a catchy subject line. The subject line for your emails should be mysterious (to build curiosity), yet shouldn’t be vague. You must create interest in the visitor’s mind and draw them towards your business offer. And you start with the subject line
2. Create a single conversion action to enhance the audience attention ratio
3. Your B2B email marketing contents must be inspirational, with useful details and understanding of the customer needs
4. Keep offering value to the readers. Begin small, but keep offering benefits to the customers. You need to express that you are willing to help them to grow and reach their targets. Use such content in the email that enhances your trust and goodwill among the customers
5. B2B buyers are more receptive to emails that include value-focused content like blogs, whitepapers, user manuals, tips and guides instead of being sales-focused messages

Content marketing forms the crux of email marketing especially if your goal is to boost its effectiveness. So, integrate the basics of content marketing with your campaigns and witness unprecedented growth.

Note: You should not share a prospect address with another business or a third-party vendor without the prospect’s permission. It would be best if you also offered a choice for the individual to opt out.

#2 Segmenting the emails:

Open rates are higher for the segmented email campaigns than the non-segmented email campaigns by 14.32 percent. – MailChimp email segmentation stats.

Imagine sending condolence messages to those who celebrate their birthday? That would be a complete disaster. Not only do you piss your customers but also put a dent in your reputation. This is why you need to apply the segmentation process. This is why segmentation works effectively.

As a marketer, you have to keep engaging with the customers on various stages of their sales cycle. There are only three stages of a buying cycle. You need to move up from each sequence gradually. These are:

1. Bottom of the buying cycle: Free trials, coupons, demos, estimates, consultations and so on
2. Middle of the buying cycle: Catalog, free samples, Case studies, free webinars and so on
3. Top of the buying cycle: Free whitepapers, free e-books, free kits, free guides, tip sheets and so on

Essential segmentations for your B2B email marketing:

Segmentation of your target audience can be done using various parameters. Some of these are:

• Job title
• Content
• Industry
• Geography
• Demographics

You can use various marketing automation software to segment your audience and enhance your B2B email marketing. With the right segmentation techniques, you boost the prospect of your email campaigns further.

#3 Personalize the emails:

29 percent of marketers do not personalize emails. 21 percent of marketers do not incorporate segmentation. –Email Marketing Industry report, 2018

A customer would interact with your business only when they know that they are communicating with humans. Your brand needs to appear human. If there is no personal appeal to your brand, then there would be nothing.

When using emails to pitch business prospects for your company, you need to personalize them as well. Emails that feel more personal have a better chance of performing. You must follow some essentialities to get email personalization right. These crucial aspects are:

• Use contextual lines related to the product rather than using generalized lines
• The email signature should contain a person’s name and designation, to show interest in building relationships with audiences
• Use information from actual data while creating an email. Keep them straightforward to increase inquisitiveness
• Use a conversational tone
• Customize your emails based on countries and the specific preferences of the customers there. It enhances your lead engagement
• Determine the frequency of sending emails based on the buyers’ persona you created. You can send emails based on the buyers’ persona to capture their interests well
• Send emails based on the response of the lead behavior. To attract more customers, offer content upgrades through emails
• Prioritize emails based on weekly, daily and monthly. You should limit within sending four or five emails per day

Adding a personal touch to the email immediately increases its credibility. Utilizing this technique can make your communication with the customers better and more efficient.

#4 Automate your email marketing campaigns:

67 percent of marketing leaders use an email automation platform. – Salesforce State of marketing, 2017.

According to various studies, companies incur a high amount of cost on fresh leads. The price further increases when it comes to conducting email marketing campaigns. Hence, email automation becomes necessary. Why do you ask? It helps to solve the issues relating to unclicked Call-to-action (CTA), untouched mail and so on.

Your indecisiveness costs massively in B2B email marketing. Automation helps you take the right decisions at the right time upon the leads you receive. It helps to build meaningful and personalized content for your campaign.

These crucial steps will guide to automate your B2B email marketing campaigns:

• Include email marketing automation in the plan to ensure that you undertake the right steps. This means that right from the very first email you send, make it an automated process.
• Find out the right automation steps for your customers as well as your business. Whether you want to have premium access or want to stick to a free account has to be decided early on the stage. So, analyze the various automation programs available and pick the one that is right.
• Set up the message you want to send to your subscribers
• Analyze the right time to send emails to your target audience and set up the automation according to that
• Keep track of the performance and refine your next B2B email marketing campaign accordingly

With email marketing automation, the system has become efficient. It has reduced the workload on the marketers. Opt for B2B email marketing automation and achieve great success.

#5 Find the Optimal email frequency:

61 percent of customers or subscribers want promotional emails every week, 38 percent from them demand promotional emails frequently- Marketing Sherpa, 2015

The total number of times you send your B2B emails on each stage contributes to building higher responsiveness, which increases the number of leads. You need to determine the frequency of the mails you send. There are some ways to determine the rate of sending emails in B2B email marketing campaigns. These are:

• Determine the email frequency based on customer profile and purchase cycle
• Practice long term deliverability strategy for increasing email frequency
• Set up the message you want to send to your subscribers
• Use your audience’s preference to segment them and conclude the frequency of the emails. Some customers like to be updated, whereas some prefer occasional mails from marketers. Segment your audience and determine email frequency
• Break your audience to weekend readers and weekday readers

Email frequency plays a significant role in determining the way your audience will react to you. Once you find the right numbers, achieving the most out of your email campaigns become easier.

#6 Increase Readability of the emails:

34 percent of customers consider promotional emails as spam as they don’t work on their mobiles. – Adestra “Consumer Adoption & Usage Study” (2016)

If you want to make way for the sales prospect to grow, you must aim to make your mails readable. You should ensure that every content you craft for your B2B email marketing campaigns is mobile optimized.

Readability is the easiness of understanding the written text. To enhance readability in your B2B email marketing campaigns, use these ways:

• Place the call-to-action buttons independently with higher visibility
• Include the main idea at the paragraph’s beginning
• Use active voice and bullet-pointed lists
• Use bold or italics for highlighted point
• Use a Q&A format to boost engagement

Readability of your emails play a major role in determining the way it will be received. To enhance positive reaction to your B2B emails, you should work on its readability.

Conclusion:

So, that covers the most effective techniques for your B2B email marketing campaigns. Now, it’s your turn to utilize these useful B2B email marketing ideas to get potential leads, sales prospects, and deals for your campaigns.

Don’t make the same mistake as the deer did. Ensure that your message reaches the customers at the right time. Oh, and don’t forget to include the right message in it as well. Emails are the most effective source of communication when it comes to B2B marketing. Therefore, ensure to apply the proper techniques to increase the effectiveness of your campaigns.

It’s worth a dime, so hit on time.

Hit the right person, with a strong reason!

Have any more techniques in mind? Post your valuable comments to connect.

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Meanwhile, you can also check out our blog five new ways to fix your content marketing strategies to know more about content marketing strategies in B2B email marketing.