77% of B2B companies use an email marketing newsletter as part of their content marketing strategy and 79% of B2B marketers find email to be the most successful channel for content distribution. – OptInMonster
I have always loved using email marketing – it is pretty much free and from my experience, it can be very effective. Email marketing is a great way to increase loyalty, sales, awareness, and engagement metrics for B2B companies. It converts leads, and it is the most powerful channel for customer loyalty and retention.
59% of B2B marketers consider email marketing to be their top channel for revenue generation.
However, it is important to understand how to use email marketing techniques effectively. It’s true that people receive hundreds of emails every day, but that doesn’t mean email marketing is dead. The key is to avoid generic, one-size-fits-all approaches and instead focus on crafting targeted, personalized messages that deeply resonate with your audience. With the right strategy and tools, email marketing can still be an effective way to connect with customers and drive sales.
First, let’s look at data-based B2B Email Guidelines based on recent research by SendInBlue and CoSchedule.
Best Days: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays (Wednesdays have the highest open rates)
Best Times: 10 am and between 3 pm and 4 pm
Recommended Frequency: 1-3 emails per month
On GDPR: Did you know that for B2B brands, if there is a genuine reason, you can continue emailing business email addresses without active consent? Just be sure there is a legitimate interest and you can justify the need to be contacting that address. The GDPR has stricter rules for B2C communications. (Note: there might be geographical nuances, so check specifically in your territory).
Secondly, you will need to build a solid foundation for email marketing success. This includes researching and segmenting your buyer personas (Do refer to Part One of my Book: “Getting to Know Your Dream Buyer” to uncover the best ways to understand your audience), crafting killer email content (Refer to Part Two of my Book: Crafting Killer Content), use the right email automation tools, and continuously track the vital data to optimize results.
Innovative Tactics in B2B Email Marketing
On Subject Lines
Personalize Your Subject Lines
Personalizing subject lines is crucial for B2B campaigns, as open rates are generally only 15%. This means that B2B companies need to take a more strategic approach when creating personalized email subject lines. This can be done by segmenting your audience and creating messages that relate to their specific areas of interest (read: Getting to Know Your Dream Buyer, PART ONE of my Book), or adding the city, and the company name. The person’s name used to be effective, but this has been overused.
- Highlight your value proposition: Make it clear and obvious what you are offering, whether it be free high-value content offers or high-level tools.
- Use a strong call-to-action (CTA): Use powerful CTAs like “watch this now”, “you have to read this”, and “sign up or miss out” in your subject line.
- Keep it short: Research shows that subject lines 7 words or less perform 65% better than those with 8 words or more.
On Email Content
Speak like a human: Use conversational language that relates to your target buyers’ pain points or desires.
Make Sure Your Content is Easy to Scan: When B2B buyers receive your email, it is important to structure the content in a way that is easy to scan. B2B emails should be brief as the recipient may not have the time to read a lot of text to understand your offer. B2B buyers are likely to scan the content to quickly evaluate if the email is worth taking action on. The goal of the email is to get the recipient to click through to your landing page or website to convert them and not for them to receive all the information in the email body. To create easily scannable content for your B2B email marketing strategy, consider these tips:
- Use short paragraphs and sentences: Keep the text short and concise to make it easy to read.
- Use bullet points: Bullet points make information easy to understand.
- Use sub-headers: Subheaders allow readers to quickly locate the points that matter to them.
- Include images: Visual elements make emails more visually appealing and interactive.
- Include external links for authority: Use external links to provide credibility and authority when mentioning statistics or data.
Send Milestones and Announcement Emails: It is important to send emails beyond just sales-driven newsletters. Customer loyalty is crucial for the success of a brand as new customers are only 20% likely to purchase while existing customers have a 60 to 70% chance of making a purchase. Examples of milestone and announcement emails are:
- Welcome emails
- Anniversary announcements
- Sales target announcements
- New product launches
- New partnerships that affect your buyers
- Birthday announcements
Additionally, these emails can also be used for sales tactics such as offering a limited discount on a brand’s anniversary.
Take Advantage of Hot Topics: Take advantage of timely events and relevant content. (Refer to Part Two of my Book: Crafting Killer Content) .This can help you gain authority and credibility, catch your audience’s attention, prove your brand’s knowledge and understanding of the industry, and add value to your audience.
Don’t Hesitate to Send Other People’s Content: By sending your email subscribers content created by others, you show that your priority is providing them with valuable and high-quality information. It also allows you to share valuable content without having to spend time creating it yourself. Additionally, sharing content created by others can help you build relationships with other websites and brands. It goes without saying that you have to be sure the content is very valuable and relevant to your target!
Add P.S.: Hotmail, a company that grew rapidly in the late 1990s, used a strategy of adding P.S. I love you for helping them go from a small company to a $400 million company in just 18 months.” I am not suggesting that you send I Love You to all your prospects. Instead, use P.S. to create urgency, provide CTR, share an extra valuable thought, or promote a bonus.
Other Important Email Tactics
Experiment with Different From Address: The idea behind using different ‘from’ addresses in your email marketing is to build rapport with your subscribers by personalizing the communication and making it feel like it’s coming from a real person, rather than a generic company email. This approach can be effective in building trust and engagement with your subscribers, as it gives them the sense that there are real people behind the brand who care about their needs. Additionally, it allows you to highlight different aspects of your company.
Spring Clean Your Email Lists: Do you want to achieve an astounding 60% open rate like Andrea Bosoni, the founder of Zero to Marketing? Then you need to maintain and clean your email list in order to improve the performance of your B2B email marketing campaign. Remove subscribers who are no longer engaging with your emails, as this can lead to lower spam complaints, lower bounce and unsubscribe rates, higher open and click-through rates, and improved email marketing analytics. Signs that it may be time to remove subscribers from your list include declining open and CTR rates, increasing unsubscribe rates, high bounce rates, many spam complaints, and poor deliverability.
Automatically Send a Second Email to Non-Openers with a new Subject Line: Automatically sending a second email to non-openers after 2-3 days with a different subject line can be an effective strategy to double open rates. By using a different subject line, you can pique their curiosity and encourage them to open the email. Additionally, sending a follow-up email after a few days can increase the chances of the email being seen, as it allows enough time for the recipient to clear out their inbox and for the original email to be forgotten.
There you have it! This is how you can drive success in B2B Email Marketing! Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments!
More details on B2B Email marketing can be found in my book: The Ultimate B2B Marketing List: 200+ Innovative Tactics You Need to Try