What do you need to know about email marketing in B2B?
Well, it’s cheap. It’s effective. It helps you develop a dialogue with your audience. And it increases brand engagement and customer satisfaction.
Pretty neat right? But how do you do it properly?
Well, let’s just say the attention-grabbing pleas of “‘buy now”’ and “‘click here”’ you see in B2C won’t cut the mustard.
Read on for the seven B2B email marketing best practices you can use to get you ahead. 👇🏼
B2B email marketing best practices
- Make subject lines snappy
- Keep tone consistent
- Pay attention to design and display
- Stay on message
- Segment & personalise
- Include a clear call-to-action (CTA)
- Develop omni-channel relationships with your customers
Make subject lines snappy
Let’s start at the beginning. The subject line of any email you send out is obviously the first thing that your customers will see. Getting it right is crucial.
You need to hook your audience and make them want to open your email. Research shows that 47% of people decide whether to open an email based solely on the subject line.
So it plays a pretty huge part in boosting your open rates. And open rates are obviously pretty darn important. That is if you want to get people to read your content.
The most important thing here is to keep it snappy: ideally 3-5 words. You could also include an emoji or two and/or a number to draw the reader in.
Don’t let all that great content you’ve written go to waste. Spend time crafting a catchy subject line that’s going to get your subscribers itching to read on.
Keep tone consistent
Tone is critical: not just in the subject line, but throughout the entire email.
You're establishing a relationship with your client, so you want to make sure you strike the right chord.
B2C email marketing reaches out and grabs the reader's attention in order to drive sales. On the other hand...
Successful B2B email marketing serves to inform and educate customers.
Work on creating content that’s insightful, informative, and directly addresses your subscribers’ pain points.
Talk specifically about what it is you can do to make their work life easier.
This might not directly convert into sales in the same way. But what it will do is engage your subscribers in your brand and what you have to say.
This is hugely powerful when it comes to B2B email marketing strategy.
Pay attention to design and display
So you’ve nailed the subject line, and you’ve created some informative and engaging content that is going to wow your customers.
Next up, you’ve got to design and display your email in a way that makes it easy to read and interact with.
Otherwise, your readers will feel disengaged. They might skim through the content or bounce off part way through.
Keep your emails concise, clear and clean. Make sure they’re visually appealing and easy to digest.
An attractive design will draw your readers in from the start and keep them engrossed till the end.
You could break up the text with a couple of images or infographics (but don’t go overboard on this).
And always remember to use a template that is mobile-responsive, as a large number of your readers will be doing so a phone.
Stay on message
Yes, your subscribers have chosen to be on your email list.
But that doesn’t mean you should constantly bombard them with irrelevant info.
When mapping out a campaign, centre it around delivering valuable information that will really resonate with your audience.
Don't send out marketing emails just for the sake of it.
Bear in mind that you’re wanting to build a relationship with your subscribers.
As a result, your content needs to be consistently high-quality. It also needs to focus on your audience and what they want.
While you're here... Why not check out our ultimate guide to B2B email marketing? 👇🏼
Segment & personalise
Crafting the perfect email is all well and good, but if it doesn’t get to the right people, your efforts will have been wasted.
That means you’re in for a spiky convo with your boss when it’s time to report.
But you can stop this from happening:
All you need to do is segment your lists into specific buyer personas.
When doing so, consider criteria such as:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Title/seniority level
- Industry
- Organisation size/type
- Stage in the buyer’s journey
- Interest in your brand
Investing time and energy into comprehensive segmentation using these data points will help fine-tune your B2B email marketing efforts.
Because when you customise your campaigns to your buyer personas, your content will always be super relevant.
This will make a world of difference when it comes to your open rates and click-through rates.
And, of course, it means more conversions.
From here, there’s a whole host of stuff you can do to directly target these groups.
You could…
- Include a call to action (more on this in a moment) which is 100% apt for their needs
- Use analytics to ensure that all emails/follow-ups go out at the optimal time (taking time zones into account) for each group
And lots more.
Segmenting your list and personalising according to buyer persona is critical to the success of your B2B email marketing campaigns.
It’ll mean you can get the right information to the right people, and at the right time.
Include a clear call-to-action (CTA)
Including a call to action in your email marketing will encourage customer engagement.
It’ll also further the dialogue between them and you.
For example, a call to action could be:
- A question
- A link to relevant information/data
- An invitation to visit your landing page
But it’s not enough to just think about what you want the call to action to be.
You need to consider its design, wording, and placement within the email.
You also have to make sure it’s surrounded by strong content that captivates the reader and makes them want to respond to the CTA positively.
Lastly, try to make it feel like a natural progression, rather than a forced next step.
This will make your readers more likely to interact with it and, by extension, your brand.
Develop omni-channel relationships with your customers
So, your email interactions need to be on point.
But don’t forget that every single interaction your customers have with your brand is important.
And any one of them could affect whether customers continue subscribing to your list and engaging with your email marketing efforts.
Try and offer a smooth and coherent customer experience across all touchpoints.
Developing a strong omni-channel relationship with your customers will only enhance brand engagement further.
Ooh, and one more thing...
It’s really important that your data is accurate and regularly updated. For example, email cleaning tools help ensure all the email addresses you have on file are valid and won’t bounce back.
Also bear in mind best practices for B2B email marketing will vary depending on the kind of clients you have and the industries you work with.
Keep testing and refining your strategies to find out what works best for you and your customers. This is an ongoing process, rather than a one-off exercise.
But this should give you a strong starting-point from which to develop a foolproof B2B email marketing campaign for 2021.
Wanna level up your email marketing? Then learn what email signature marketing could do for you 👈
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