Emails remain one of the most professional and efficient communication methods to be ever invented, and that is why they have been turned to a successful marketing strategy. This marketing strategy can be implemented in different ways depending on your type of business, and the approach you use will determine its efficacy.
The strategy can have various phases like writing cold sales emails to leads or customers that are no longer effective. Although most techniques work well for B2C companies, B2B businesses have gray areas concerning email marketing, which has caused this strategy to be used at half capacity.
How can B2B business owners unlock the full potential of email marketing in their respective industries?
Collect data on customers
A data-driven email marketing strategy outperforms any other campaign of this kind. You can start scouring the data received from your email service provider that offers the generic information. That data includes the businesses that open the emails you are sending, and when they do so.
You can also find the links or CTA button they click on to try to determine what aspects work and which don’t. Also, find out who is buying and how frequently they are doing so, to structure your strategy accordingly.
Gathering data can help you start segmenting and organizing your email lists to personalize the content and the delivery. You can also gather the customer purchase history to try and identify their individual company needs. A data-driven approach can help you personalize the emails much better, leading to improved engagement from customers.
Set SMART goals
When starting your B2B email marketing strategy, you should ensure that the campaign is SMART. That means it should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Timely
Therefore, right at the beginning, you must set goals for the campaign to make it measurable. Set KPIs that will help you monitor and track the performance of the strategy. The emails you send should also be specific to the needs of each business on the email list. When you initially set the goals, ensure that they are realistic and achievable.
The digital marketing experts at Assignment Writers suggest that you can base the KPIs on historical performance and current industry trend information. Also, the content must be carefully timed to reach customers meaningfully and lead to a higher open rate, which might result in an improved click-through rate. You should redevelop the campaign if the email marketing strategy does not hit the bull’s eye in terms of reaching the predetermined goals.
Nurture the leads
Using email marketing as a form of lead nurturing strategy is the best way to use your campaign to the fullest potential. The email marketing strategy should be a link in a chain of tactics designed to make the targeted business make a purchase.
Therefore, you should augment the email marketing strategy to the sales funnel designed for the business. Users that click through the email should be moved to the next phase of the funnel.
Thus, there should be no meaningless moves, but every email should count and contribute to the bigger picture. You can use emails to move customers from the mailbox to the website where they can be introduced to your product range.
Create educative content
Although the initial idea you might have of email marketing is direct selling, that is usually the way to repel customers away. If you would like to draw customers close, it is crucial to create a conversation with the customer.
Professional content writers at custom essay service say that engaging customers with educational content can spark a great conversation with B2B companies. Creating content with industry insights that are helpful to the targeted audience can be one of the best ways to engage with them. Customers might be moved to ask questions, and that would make you be an industry thought-leader.
The targeted audience might be more prone to spending their money on you after this. Therefore, do not use emails to send product or service offers only but also create a meaningful conversation that adds value to the customers.
Format the content to be easy-to-read
B2B business owners or responsible employees that make the purchase decisions are extremely busy people. They want to remain as effective and productive as possible, so they eliminate any distraction that comes their way. That includes the emails they get.
Once B2B business owners or employees with great responsibility identify it as time-wasting, it will go straight to the trash folder. That emphasizes the importance of hooking them at first glance by formatting it in an easy-to-read way.
That includes breaking down some pieces of information into a bullet or numbered lists and shortening paragraphs. It will be much easier for businesses to quickly scan through the content and see if it is worthwhile. For your emails to reach the audience meaningfully and get higher open and click-through rates, you should make it easy-to-read.
Authenticate the company domain
The worst thing that can happen is having your email sent to the spam folder. The emails you send can be categorized as spam for a number of reasons, one of them is using large email lists but another is an untrustworthy source.
That can be very detrimental because almost no one checks their spam folder, thus sending emails that wind up in this section is a waste of resources and your overall plan. There are measures you can take to ensure this does not happen, and that is authenticating the domain you’re using for business purposes.
You can do so by using DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) that validates the authenticity of the sender. Using this technique can help you prevent being categorized as a spam email sender, and therefore the emails sent by the business will reach their destination.
Establish a single point of contact with customers
Emails are more effective when the business you are marketing to knows the person they deal with. Therefore, you should establish a single point of contact for each customer on the email list. They will be the only ones that send content on behalf of the business to build a trust relationship.
Using generic-looking emails like [email protected] or [email protected] will not fulfill the purpose.
Have an actual business representative handling that particular account for better communication leading to an improved customer journey.
Customers will also feel at ease, asking questions to an individual rather than a mailbox that they do not even know who manages it. Therefore, use your company email address or assign customers to different employees to handle them directly. That will also add that personal effect to the business relationship.
Share events using email marketing
If you would like to share more meaningful and engaging content, try to add value to the customer experience. That includes offering opportunities to better themselves by garnering information regarding the industry they are in.
There are a lot of seminars and events that offer companies an opportunity to do so. Sometimes a B2B business may get invitations to an event relative to one of their customers. The B2B business can use emails to share the invitations as a gesture to show that they genuinely care about their customers and don’t only care about their money.
In some cases, you might even host an event yourself, and the best way to get the word around is by using emails. Sending interactive invitations with a button that allows customers to RSVP can be an excellent method of taking your email marketing strategy to the next level.
Choose the perfect time to send emails
B2B businesses should also calculate the time they send emails, but they will not follow the example of B2C enterprises. The latter targets individuals, whereas your goal as a B2B business is getting businesses on board to buy the products you are marketing.
Therefore, you should research when the target market opens and reads emails. That is especially important if you are targeting offshore companies that are in a different time zone.
You can use tools to identify the best time to send marketing content through emails or use Outlook’s feature of read receipts. Once you have identified the time to send emails, ensure that the content is scheduled to go live precisely at the recommended time-slot.
Repurpose content for email marketing
Emails work hand-in-hand with other marketing strategies that you may be implementing in your B2B business. That includes the content marketing strategy that may be going on in the business blog or other distribution channels.
Some of the content shared on these platforms can be evergreen, and that offers marketers an opportunity to repurpose their content for email marketing. For example, when you are running blank on topics to center email marketing content around, the best performing content on the business blog can come in very handy.
That will benefit the email marketing strategy because you won’t run out of content to share with the audience. Therefore, the audience remains satisfied, and your email marketing strategy flourishes because of having enough content at all times. You can also use content from social media platforms that are suitable to be converted into an email.
The bottom line
Unlocking the full potential of a B2B email marketing strategy involves taking multiple steps towards enhancing the customer experience while pushing customers to make the desired decision. You can do so by augmenting your email marketing strategy to the sales funnel developed for the business.
Use a data-driven approach to ensure that the business reaches customers meaningfully through personalization and the best time to send email marketing content. Also, the business’s content well will never be dry if you repurpose content.
