Disclaimer: This is a guest blog submitted by Alwayne Powell
B2B email marketing is arguably the most effective method for building trust and relationships with potential customers.
According to a study by Sopro, 77% of B2B buyers prefer to be contacted via their email. This is more than double any other channel.
No matter what industry your B2B company is in, email campaigns should be a foundational part of your client outreach and development.
In this article, we’ll tell you exactly how to get the most from your B2B email marketing strategy. We’llWe’ll cover top tips that will capture the imagination of your readers and boost conversions.
Source: statista.com
How Can B2B Email Marketing Boost Conversions?
Your email marketing campaigns are funnels. Their purpose is to get your reader to do something—which, at least with Ecommerce email marketing, is to click on your landing page link.
It’s a bit different for B2B communication. Here, the purpose is to establish a more formal relationship with your prospects.
Your task is to build a sense of familiarity and show (not tell) how your services could be key to enhancing their business model.
However, humans are stubborn creatures, and we’re rightly skeptical of anyone that tells us what to do. This means you can’t just tell someone to get in touch via your cloud contact center and expect a response.
To ensure that your email campaigns are effective, it’s crucial to include a no- reply option in your emails, allowing recipients to easily unsubscribe or manage their preferences. This empowers your audience and helps maintain a healthy and engaged email list.
The goal is for your B2B strategy to actually drive conversions. For that, you’ll need to write your emails in a way that makes you sound sympathetic and “on the same side” as your reader.
It requires an understanding of human psychology and the techniques for standing out in a crowded email inbox. You’ll need to educate, engage, and personalize your messages to truly connect with your B2B audience.
So, let’s break down the core principles of creating successful B2B marketing campaigns.
Boost Conversions with Cloudways Managed Hosting
Maximize your website’s speed with Cloudways. Our optimized stack ensures fast performance, driving higher conversion rates for your business.
1. Segment Your Email List
Customer segmentation is a major principle in marketing. It’s the recognition that, since everyone has different needs, you shouldn’t be sending out the same type of email to your entire contact list.
Rather, your B2B customers should be divided into smaller, more targeted groups based on your segmentation criteria.
For instance, you might have an email campaign for your ‘early prospects’ segment. Or, you might have a campaign for nurturing repeat business.
Of course, there’s no limit to how far you can go with this. It’s common for businesses to send a ‘Back in Stock’ email to individual email recipients, if they’re interested in hearing about a product update.
The point of all this is that you can get straight to the point of why you’re emailing someone. You can deliver helpful content directly to your target audience, boosting your chances of converting a potential buyer.
2. Craft Engaging Subject Lines
Your email subject lines are part one of what your prospects see land in their inbox. A good subject line should pique the target customer’s curiosity. The goal is to provide an overview of what the email is about.
They’re only 40 to 60 characters in length, which means you’ll need to be picky with your words to craft a compelling opening. If possible, try to highlight your unique selling point with a sprinkle of urgency. This will help to boost email open rates.
However, it’s also important not to stray into the realm of over-excessive language. This won’t just annoy your customers, but it also runs the risk of getting caught by email spam filters. In fact, it’s thought that 14.3% of all emails don’t land in their recipient’s inboxes for this reason.
So, avoid making deceptive claims in your subject lines that don’t match the content of your email. Not only that, but try to limit your use of exclamation marks and keywords like “Free” or “Money.”
Source:blog.awebar.com
3. Use Dynamic Content to Personalize Emails
Dynamic content is a great way of personalizing content for the individual reader without creating multiple email drafts. It essentially takes customer segmentation to the next level, pushing products and services that are based specifically on the recipient’s needs and interests.
For example, you could implement a dynamic element in your emails that shows off similar products to the ones previously bought by an email’s associated account. Or, at the very least, simply address the reader by name. Once you’ve got this automation up and running, it’ll make a big difference for a little extra effort.
4. Use a Good Hook as the Preheader Text
Your preheader texts are the second part of what readers see in emails. This is the text to the right of the subject line. It’s often(but not always) the first text found in an email.
The subject line is about announcing yourself and what the email is about. The preheader text should rather provide a reason to keep reading. That means you need to write a hook. For instance, you could address the client directly by their name. You could accompany this with a call to action on the next steps. For example, “Hey x, long time no speak. We’ve got a new deal for you—come and see!”
Usually, email preheaders have a limit of 85 to 100 characters, although it’s good practice to shorten that to 80 characters for mobile devices.
5. Implement A/B Testing
A/B testing is when you send out two types of marketing email templates, each with one slight variation. Then, by comparing their outputs, you can determine which piece of content is most effective at driving conversions. You rinse and repeat this process for every variation.
Testing isn’t glamorous, but it is powerful. It’s how you’ll find the perfect formula for your marketing emails. Testing helps to ruthlessly make changes if your strategy stops working.
Since only 45% of B2B email marketers use A/B testing, you’ll be in the enlightened minority. You’ll know what will grab your reader’s attention.
6. Optimize for Mobile Viewing
Mobile devices have different screen sizes and capabilities than their desktop counterparts. This means that B2B marketers must create content that is readable and engaging, no matter the format.
The name of the game here is ‘responsive’ content. It means that it should automatically resize to fit the devices’ dimensions without messing everything up.
That means you need to avoid multiple columns of text and stick to mobile-friendly fonts and text sizes.
Your contact buttons—whether that’s Microsoft teams phone numbers or business emails—should be prominent and clickable. If your reader can click on the highlighted text and instantly call or draft an email, it removes the barriers to communication and makes a conversion more likely.
Source: Unsplash
7. Monitor and Analyze Email Performance
To get the most from your email campaigns, you need a way of tracking their performance indicators.
Usually, marketers monitor bounce rates, conversion rates, and email deliverability. Having access to this data means you can make informed decisions about your B2B marketing strategy rather than just having a shot in the dark.
The simplest way to do this is through a dedicated email marketing platform like MailChimp, which has integrated A/B testing and an analytics dashboard.
Or, for a free alternative, you could set up Google Analytics to track website traffic, conversions, and revenue created by your email campaigns. It’s a surprisingly adaptable solution—with just one Google account being able to track statistics across multiple websites. This makes it easier to spot localized trends, no matter if you’re creating marketing content for the EU version of your website or targeting somewhere in Australia.
Optimize Conversion Rates with Cloudways Managed Cloud Hosting
Enhance your site’s speed using Cloudways. Our advanced caching and CDN deliver peak performance, ensuring improved conversion rates.
Conclusion
Now, you should be ready to tackle your own B2B email marketing strategy. But don’t worry if it doesn’t immediately reach the heights that you dreamt of. Remember that this is a learning process—only through constant monitoring and incremental improvement will you find the format that resonates with your client base.
Key Takeaways
- B2B email marketing is the preferred method of client outreach.
- Your email content should be personalized and dynamic to boost engagement.
- Testing and analyzing email performance should be a constant cycle of improvement.
Q1. What are some ways to increase conversions through B2B email marketing?
The key to increasing conversions is to stuff your emails full of valuable content. The easiest way to achieve this is via personalization. So, your first priority should be segmenting your client base so you can deliver more targeted campaigns.
Q2. How can I make my B2B email marketing campaigns more personalized to increase engagement and drive conversions?
Dynamic content is how marketers personalize their emails to seem like they’ve been written for the individual, even when they could have gone out to hundreds or thousands of recipients. Common techniques include addressing the reader by their name and providing custom recommendations. Collect and use customer data only with their consent.
Q3. What are the most important metrics to track for B2B email marketing success?
It depends on what you want to learn about. Open rate is a pretty good indicator of how engaging your subject line and preheader text are. Click-through rates can hint at how compelling your written copy is. Conversion rate is obviously important as a general indicator of campaign performance. And if your unsubscribe rates are high, it’s time to go back to the drawing board
Q4. How can I improve my email subject lines and copy to increase open and click-through rates?
Subject lines should explain what the email is about and why it’s taking up space in your recipient’s inbox. Don’t waste their time. Get straight to the point of the email’s purpose, address them by name, and build urgency with a call to action.
Q5. What are some tips for building and maintaining a high-quality email list for B2B marketing?
The first step is to recognize that you can’t buy B2B email subscribers. They’re acquired through patience and trust. Make sure to provide clear opt-ins for your email newsletters/educational content, or your readers will unsubscribe at a moment’s notice.4
Author’s Bio
|
Alwayne Powell is an experienced performance marketing leader with an extensive background in the digital space, working client and agency side to provide paid search, SEO and CRO solutions in the B2B and B2C sectors. They are the current Senior Digital Marketing Manager at leading communication platform provider 8×8. You can find them on LinkedIn. |
