Defying predictions that social media would lead to the “death of email”, research shows that email marketing has generated a consistent response over the past few years. It makes sense, considering:

• 86% of professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes.

• 40% of B2B marketers rated the leads generated by email marketing as high quality.

• 72% of B2B buyers are most likely to share useful content via email.

This article will help you understand why email marketing should be a key pillar of your B2B marketing strategy and how to use email marketing strategies to further your business goals.

What Is Email Marketing

In its most basic sense, email marketing is when a business promotes its products or services via an email distribution list. Originally the digital equivalent of direct mail advertising, technological advancements have transformed email marketing into a way businesses can nurture relationships with potential customers.

However, using advanced email marketing tools and automation, you can go deeper and gather lead intelligence that allows your business to respond in a more skilful and human way to your audience's needs. For instance, you can set up tracking and triggers so that potential customers receive emails relevant to the topics they were exploring on your digital platforms. Doing so allows you to craft highly personalised messages and call to actions that will drive maximum results.

What Makes Email Marketing Effective

One of the main advantages email marketing has over other digital marketing tactics is the element of trust. It’s an opt-in channel. Businesses are asking you to contact them. They want to know more about what you offer.

Effective B2B email marketing lets you bypass the competition found in organic search, paid advertising and social media and speak directly to the potential customer. Marketing automation allows you to understand the needs and interests of that customer so that email is able to become more of a two-way conversation instead of a broadcast channel.

 Indeed, 59% of marketers cite email as their most effective digital marketing channel. Consider the following email marketing statistics:

• A State of Email Survey conducted by Litmus found that email marketing returns a staggeringly high 42:1 ROI.

• The GetResponse Email marketing benchmark report shows that in the UK email marketing has an open rate of 18.39% and a click-through rate of 2.66%.

• According to data compiled by Smart Insights the average conversion rate for email marketing was 2.3%. This was the fourth highest marketing conversion rate, following paid search advertising (2.9%), organic search (2.8%) and referral marketing (2.6%).

What is B2B Email Marketing?

We believe that the split between B2B and B2C isn’t nearly as clear cut as traditional marketing models would have us believe. However, there are some nuances between the two audiences that should influence the way you think about running an effective email campaign. 

Balance the Rational with the Emotional

In the B2C world, the understanding is that you focus your email marketing more on engaging with your customer on an emotional level. On the B2B side of things, your relationship with other business entities tends towards a more rational approach. While still being personable and emotionally engaging, you need to use facts and data to help prospective customers understand how your product or service will benefit their organisation.

Build a Relationship Over Time

For B2C email marketing, the accepted fact is that your prospect needs to be exposed to your offer at least seven times to make a purchasing decision. In the B2B world, the number of 'touches' your prospect needs is higher since B2B purchases are generally more complex and require a bigger investment.

This means you will need to plan an email marketing campaign that intelligently sends multiple broadcasts over a long period. You have to make a favourable impression and educate with each email.

Great Content Over a Great Offer

B2B subscribers are careful about investigating products or services for their business. You’ll get the best results when you focus on providing high-quality content that seeks to educate subscribers, rather than pushing them to buy immediately. For instance, using a “Learn More” call to action link instead of “Buy Now”.

Part of email marketing is managing subscriber expectations so they know they’ll occasionally receive a sales pitch. You’ll have much more success if your pitch is similar to what your customer has shown interest in previously. This demonstrates that you’re aware of what’s important to them, enhancing their customer experience with your company.

Target the Decision Making Team

When marketing to a business, rarely will you be dealing with a single decision-maker. Rather, you’ll need to address the needs of a team of people who are involved in the purchase decision.

Each person will interpret your marketing campaign differently, so make sure you research your audience and adapt your message accordingly. Target content based on the person’s specific role and provide the type of information they need to complete their buying job.

• Learn how dynamic email content can boost engagement

• Learn more about understanding your client team to understand your client

How to Put Together an Email Marketing Campaign

To run a successful email marketing campaign you need to build out from a foundation of your readers’ permission. You want to secure an invitation into their inbox, curate which distribution lists they’ll be on, regularly provide quality content, and make adjustments based on performance feedback. In this way, you'll build a satisfying two-way relationship built on trust.

Use Lead Magnets

In the B2B world, you must provide a good reason for potential clients to hand over their contact information. This is where a strong call to action and quality copywriting comes into play.

To build an email list for marketing you need to establish your credibility, explain what your emails are for, and offer a lead magnet — a quid pro quo incentive. Be specific about the benefits readers will gain by subscribing, so they’ll feel that they’re trading their email address for something worth having.

Some common B2B lead magnets include:

• Professional education email series

• Free white papers or eBooks

• New releases and product updates

To provide great customer experience, let subscribers decide what type of content they want to receive. For example, some clients might want product updates, while others only want to hear about special promotions you’re offering. Also, make sure you set and follow delivery frequency expectations. If you promise a weekly newsletter, don’t abuse their trust and barrage them with daily promotions.

• Learn more about using lead magnets to effectively build your email list.

Build Lists and Segment Your Audience

The effectiveness of your email campaign is dependent on the quality of your distribution lists. Segment your audience so that you’re emailing relevant content to the appropriate viewers for your marketing objective.

You should build B2B email marketing lists specific to your business and your marketing goals. For example:

• Prospects who have requested additional information

• Newsletter subscribers

• Daily offer email list

• New customers versus existing clients

By segmenting your lists, you can send better-targeted communication and develop a closer relationship with your client. For example, you can send a message to check-in on only those people that didn’t open your last email. You can also send a completely different broadcast to the viewers that do open your emails, indicating that they’re receptive to your communications. 

Automated Emails

Make sure your viewers remember that they opted-in by sending a welcome email immediately after they subscribe. A study by Experian found that introductory emails have an impressive open rate of 57.8%. This means subscribers are likely to read your welcome message more than any other type of promotional email.

Your initial email should thank the reader for subscribing. Explain what you’ll be doing with their information and confirm what type of content they’ll receive (and how frequently). Also include links for different ways to stay in touch and a call to action. From there, it’s simply a matter of living up to the expectations you’ve set.

Use an automatic delivery system to stay on top of email distribution and ensure that your broadcasts don’t lapse too long. How often to send email marketing will depend on the content type and the subscriber’s preferences.

A popular tactic for staying visible is to use a drip campaign. This is a series of emails that are automatically delivered—over a few days to a few months—that keep your brand top-of-mind.

Using marketing automation, you can also segment your lists and send emails based on behavioural triggers. Targeted communications can go to a subscriber who has accepted an invitation to a webinar or met your team at your booth at an industry event. You can even segment those audiences further based on whether the subscriber attended the webinar or not, or if your conference contact clicked on a link to a sales page in your follow up email.

• Learn more about behaviour-based email marketing.

Analyse and Adjust

Accurate email analytics are critical to optimising your campaign since they show what’s working and give you targeted hints about areas for improvement. They are an important tool for knowing how to refine your message and generate even better results than you would with a basic campaign.

If you have the volumes available to get meaningful results, use techniques like split testing to answer questions like “what email subject lines drive the most audience engagement?” This is where you divide your email list into a few equally sized groups and test different subject lines for each one. By tracking the results, you’ll see what gets the best response and be able to further optimise your campaign.

Email marketing doesn’t require a lot of funding, compared to other forms of marketing, but you do need to put in the leg work. However, if your call to action is strong, your follow-up is consistent, and you have tracking in place, then you’ll likely have a successful campaign.

Do's and Don'ts of Email Marketing

When used correctly, email marketing gives you repeated opportunities to engage with a receptive audience and prove that your business has the solution to their needs. Here are some B2B email marketing best practices to help ensure that you remain in their good graces.

Don’t Buy Email Lists For Marketing — We strongly recommend against buying email lists. Ever. It doesn’t help you in the short-term and will only hurt your brand in the long run:

• Buying leads breaks basic data ethics

• It skews your marketing performance data

• You will create a negative customer experience

Purchased email leads haven't opted-in for your marketing or expressed an interest in your services. Introducing yourself this way gets any future relationship off on the wrong foot. You’ll find your emails generating a high level of complaints and will likely get your account black-listed as a result. 

Don’t Spam — While it’s important to send multiple emails to nurture a lead over time, you need to find the correct balance. If people receive too many emails from marketers they’ll unsubscribe. One way to resolve this conflict is to give the subscriber an option to set email frequency when they sign up. According to the Data & Marketing Association (DMA), one to five emails per month is considered an acceptable frequency for B2B marketing. However, you should always test and adjust to your business.

Do Use Opt-In Forms — Allow prospective clients to self-segment by using an opt-in form that allows them to choose the desired content type and frequency. This saves you time curating your distribution lists and makes it easier to send them content that’s relevant to their business needs.

Do Ask to Be a Trusted Address — Thanks to anti-spam filters, a sizeable percentage of marketing emails never make it to a subscriber’s inbox. When people sign up for your email marketing, ask that they include you to their trusted address book. This will increase the number of emails successfully delivered to your audience.

Do Use Responsive Design — Take the time to ensure your email marketing content looks good across desktop and mobile devices. For example, make sure your call to action is easy to tap on mobile devices and your content loads lightening-quick.

Do Follow Email Marketing Rules — Your email marketing campaign needs to meet the standards and regulations regarding personal information for your target audience. For instance, the Information Commissioner's Office in the UK, the CAN-SPAM Act in the US, and Europe’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) Law.

• Learn more about email marketing best practices for your business.

How to Measure Email Marketing Success

How you measure the success of your email marketing campaign depends on your goals. However, three of the most commonly used metrics for measuring email marketing performance are open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribes.

Open Rate

Big surprise, your open rate tells you how many people are opening your emails. The value of knowing your open rate is that it helps you gauge how well you’ve developed a relationship with your audience.

When your open rate is high, it means that people are excited to read your emails. A low open rate indicates that your subscribers aren’t engaged and that you need to work on your campaign – for instance, by providing more valuable content or better managing expectations.

The average open rates for B2B email marketing varies across different industries. However, the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) is a good resource for B2B email marketing benchmarks.

Click-Through Rate

Your click-through rate (CTR), shows how many people clicked on a link in your email. Again, the average CTR for B2B email marketing will depend on your specific industry.

A high CTR means that you have a well-targeted message, where people want to learn more by following your links. A low CTR means that your message isn’t getting through (or possibly that your links are broken). It’s a sign that you need to review your targeting, improve your copy and make sure that everything is working correctly.

Unsubscribe Rate

The unsubscribe rate tells you how many people have decided to stop receiving your emails. If this rate is high compared to the number of people who opt-in for your emails then you’ve got some serious work to do. Examine the points at which people decide to opt-out to learn how to improve your email marketing campaigns and test adjustments.

For instance, check that your content is aligned with the call to action that got them to sign up. For additional insight, include a note asking people to briefly explain why they’re opting out of your email marketing campaign.

B2B Email Marketing Ideas

The majority of your emails will fall into two categories: engagement content and transactional content.

Engagement content is focused on developing your relationship with the client. To keep subscribers interested even when they're not in the market to buy.

Transactional emails are focused on making and closing a sale. They’re built around the transactions and experiences customers have had with your business. 

Between these two categories, there are numerous types of emails you can send, depending on your campaign objectives. Here are some examples of different ways you can communicate with your customers using B2B email marketing:

White Papers, Tips and Tutorials — Provide instructive and educational marketing emails that help recipients understand the business problems that your product or service solves. Helping prospective clients learn something useful via a white paper or a drip email series is a great way to establish credibility and build trust in your brand.

Event Guides and Newsletters — Help your audience plan for a large industry event by creating a useful guide sharing your expert point of view about what’s worth seeing. This frames you as a well-informed member of the professional community. You can also send post-event email newsletters to share valuable insights you learned, further building your reputation as a thought leader.

Webinar Invitations — Create a campaign inviting your desired audience to a live stream. Webinars are a great way to showcase your expertise and directly engage with prospects who are close to making a purchasing decision. Send subscribers who missed a link to a recorded version and encourage them to reach out with any questions.

Shopping Cart Reminders — Cart abandonment emails are crucial if your business has an online store. A study by the Baymard Institute found that the average online shopping cart abandonment rate is almost 70%. If a potential customer fails to complete a transaction, send them a polite reminder of why they wanted the product, along with a strong CTA. By recapturing these interrupted sales, you can significantly increase your profits.

Announcements — Has your business recently won an award? Released a major new product or service? Acquired or merged with another company? Periodic announcements allow you to keep in touch with your entire client base, bringing your business back to the attention of current, past and future clients.

Case Studies — Give your current prospects details of the types of results they can expect by sharing case studies that highlight the success of past clients similar to them. Remember, companies are partially motivated by logic, so back up your claims with hard facts, stats and social proof. Show subscribers how you can serve their company.

Free Trial or Demos — Target prospective clients with a free product trial or limited-time demo of your service. While some subscribers may be swayed by in-depth case studies, others will prefer getting first-hand insight into what your business can do for their organisation. This can go a long way towards nurturing trust with your prospective clients.

Order Follow-ups — Let customers know the status of their order, such as when they can expect it to be shipped and when it has been delivered. Use these messages as opportunities to further promote your brand. For example, include coupons for future purchases, contact details for customer support or request feedback about their experience working with you.

• Learn more B2B email marketing campaign ideas

What Is Email Marketing Software

As you might suspect, running an email marketing campaign requires a bit more than what standard email software can provide. It’s more than just writing a message and clicking send. Rather, you will need features like a template designer, an HTML editor, and access to email analytics. Moreover you will benefit from having access to automation, workflows, and dynamic content for advanced personalisation.

Using a separate email service that doesn’t integrate with your marketing platform slows down workflow. Not to mention different software uses different measurement methods, which can lead to inconsistent performance data.

For these reasons, we recommend using a marketing automation platform with integrated email marketing software. You’ll have access to specialised email marketing tools to design and deliver a great customer experience. This is what will take your email marketing strategy to the next level. For instance:

• Personalisation – marketing automation makes it possible to personalise more than just the name field. Dynamic content allows you to tailor images, copy, call to action, etc based on what you know about your recipient.

• Behaviour-based workflows – make your email marketing responsive to your prospect’s interactions with the company, and provide relevant and timely messaging at critical points in the buying process.

• Track interactions after sign up and click through – not just from email, but across other channels as well. This allows you to gain a more holistic understanding of how different pieces of your marketing strategy are working together.

Integrated email automation software supports your marketing and sales objectives. It’s designed to deliver the information your prospects need exactly when (and how) they want it. You’ll achieve better results including greater time savings, increase lead generation and higher customer retention.

Your B2B Email Marketing Agency

1827 Marketing provides expert B2B email marketing services that will help you forge a stronger relationship with your target audience.

Our expert marketers will assist you in developing a well-executed email marketing campaign that guides your clients towards making the desired purchase decision.

Contact us today for a free demo. We'll show you how you can use our integrated marketing automation platform to save time, track results and maximise your email marketing ROI.