Do you know that in 2020, approximately 306.4 billion emails were received and sent daily? As a result, email marketing has been growing as one of the most preferred marketing channels. According to research by McKinsey & Company, email marketing has a 40 times higher productivity rate than social media marketing. Also, email marketing improves the consumer buying process by three times compared to social media marketing. Explore the most effective B2B email marketing best practices for optimal results.
Marketers have been increasingly using emails to increase lead generation. However, you must properly plan your marketing campaign to leap the benefits of mail marketing. Email marketing has approximately 4200% Return On Investment (ROI), but to achieve such success, you have to use the best email marketing practices.
Why is it Important to Understand B2B Email Marketing Best Practices?
B2B marketers who intend to use email marketing should know how and when to apply different email marketing strategies. A successful email marketing campaign will help you:
Improve Your Marketing Reach
Email marketing remains one of the best-performing digital marketing strategies to help a business reach its customers. B2B companies that properly plan email marketing attract more customers and build brand loyalty.
The best email marketing practices convince many people to subscribe to your email list. Your audience reads these emails and learns about your products, promotions, or offers, influencing them to buy from your company.
Avoid Penalties
Businesses that deal with email marketing ought to be careful. Otherwise, they risk getting blacklisted. A potential or current customer may blacklist your business if you spam by consistently sending emails for no good reason. As a result, your customers may get irritated and block you.
Getting blacklisted can make you lose valuable customers, reduces your sales, and limit your ability to stay ahead of the competition in the market. When a customer blocks you, you’ll have no way to reach them, and they’ll have no way to learn about your products.
Email Marketing is Productive
The main reason why customers market their businesses is to generate leads. Email marketing is more effective in generating leads compared to social media marketing. Increased lead generation helps increase your prospects to attract and retain highly valued customers as they are more informed about your products and are confident when making a purchase. Generating high-quality leads will help you analyze and understand your consumer base to develop products well-suited for your audience.
8 B2B Email Marketing Best Practices
Sending one or two emails is easy. However, strategize as needed if you intend to use email marketing as a long-term strategy. Here are the best B2B email marketing practices.
1. Use Text-Only Emails
Some people like adding images to their marketing emails, thinking that they will make their emails more appealing. However, that is not the case since your clients will only see a distorted version of the image, making it difficult for them to read your email content. Additionally, images take a long time to load, and some people are not patient enough to wait for the image to open. As a result, they may not know the content in your email, reducing the impact of your email marketing campaign.
To improve your email conversion rate, write short but descriptive paragraphs when writing your emails.
2. Watch Your Analytics
After sending out your marketing emails, monitor them to see how they perform. Some of the things that you should measure are:
- Conversion rates
- Open rates
- Delivery rate
- Click-through rate
- Bounce rate and email sharing rate
- Revenue per subscriber
- Revenue per email
Measuring these aspects enables you to know the ROI of your email marketing campaign. If your email marketing strategies are performing well, look for ways to maintain and improve the results. However, if the emails are not making any difference in your business, you should evaluate where you’re going wrong and re-strategize.
3. Personalize Your Videos
Personalizing your email videos is another way to make the B2B email marketing strategy a success. Personalization allows you to create a relationship with your clients. Personalized email marketing videos can help you pass important information in a few words.
The best way to personalize your email videos is by addressing customers with their first names in the emails. Another way to personalize videos is by sending them content that fits their needs. To know the type of information your customers want, observe their purchase behavior, ask about the products they’re interested in, and categorize them according to buyer personas.
However, creating personalizing email marketing videos is not an easy task. For this reason, you can use video email products such as BombBomb to make the process easy and fast.
4. Optimize Your Subject Line
Most B2B and B2C marketers focus on creating good email content and forget the email subject line. An email subject line helps to create a first impression, and it can determine whether your customers will read your email content or not.
For this reason, include offers in your email subject line to increase your open rates. An example of a good email subject line is “free shipping for shopping worth $70 or more.”
Another way to optimize your email subject is by making it short. You can also use attractive emojis. However, use them sparingly. Otherwise, they may turn your customers off.
5. Follow Up With Leads
Often, B2B businesses focus on building a good relationship with their customers, enabling them to become loyal to your business.
Therefore, if a new customer opens your emails, follow up by sending them content that suits their needs. This way, you will earn their trust easily. Any time they want to buy a product or get a service your company offers, they will buy from you.
6. Send Emails When Necessary
Sending emails to your customers anytime for no good reason can be annoying. As a result, some customers may unsubscribe from your email list.
For this reason, schedule your email marketing campaigns wisely. First, ensure you send out your emails when customers are likely to open them. This way, you will increase your open rates. Ensure the email contains useful content, and it should also sync with your other marketing efforts.
7. Include a Compelling Call to Action
Many people receive several marketing emails in a single day. Include a compelling call to action to increase lead generation in your email.
When you include a call to action in your emails, add a button that will direct the customers to a specific landing page. The button should stand out from the rest of the email content to attract a customer’s attention. It should not be more than five words long to make it easy for customers to read.
8. Include Your Business Logo in the Email
Including your company logo in your emails is among the B2B email design best practices. A logo can help increase engagement with customers. Additionally, your business logo can help prospective customers remember your business easily.
The logo you include in your B2B email marketing campaign should be uniform across all your marketing materials, including brochures, pamphlets, and the website. This way, customers will trust the credibility of your business.
B2B Email Marketing Best Practices: The Best Way to Get Started
Consult and create a plan before starting your email marketing campaign. This way, you will avoid making costly mistakes. Here are some tips to help you get started.
Select an Email Marketing Tool
Choose the most compatible email marketing tool to integrate easily with your business. Email marketing tools offer several advantages. First, these tools can automate your emails and send them to different customers within a short time. Email marketing tools can also offer various email templates to assist you in expanding your email list.
Nowadays, there are several email marketing tools, including MailChimp and Hubspot. These tools offer different features and services. Therefore, study each tool and understand what they offer. Choose a service provider according to your business needs, including your audience size, budget, and marketing goals.
Build a Content Strategy
One of the things that make email marketing strategies effective is the content. Therefore, create a content strategy.
The first step when it comes to building a content strategy involves identifying your target audience. Your target audience will direct you on the type of content you should write. Afterward, create different buyer personas and choose appropriate topics for each group. Research more information on those topics and create informative emails.
Create a Follow-up Process
After sending an email to your customers, you can send a follow-up email. A follow-up email helps you know if prospective clients are interested in your products or services.
When you start using an email marketing strategy, come up with the best way to create a customer follow-up email. Here are strategies to help you create a good follow-up strategy:
- State the reason for contacting the customer
- Use personalized email subject lines on the follow-up emails
- End each follow-up email with a clear plan
- Schedule days when you will be sending out the follow-up emails
Once you send a follow-up email, wait for the customer to reply. If the customer doesn’t reply, don’t send another email.
Monitor Your Campaigns
Email marketing is a continuous marketing strategy. Therefore, once you send your emails, track them to see how they perform. Examples of the aspects you need to measure are the click-through rate, open rates, unsubscribe rate, and deliverability rate.
Once you know your email marketing campaign’s performance, look for ways to enhance the performance of this marketing strategy. Monitoring your campaigns may also help you identify your mistakes, allowing you to correct them.
Are You Looking for More B2B Email Marketing Best Practices?
Marketing is essential in B2B businesses because it helps create brand awareness. Additionally, B2B marketing can help you in lead generation. However, if you want your marketing efforts to work, you should do it correctly. Contact us today or check out our additional resources if you’re looking for more B2B marketing tips, tricks, and templates.
