Within the B2B segment, email marketing is one of the most effective lead generation techniques to enhance sales.
As per statistics, email marketing generates $42 in revenue for every $1 spent, resulting in an astounding 4,200% ROI. No wonder, 40% of B2B marketers claim email to be their most powerful marketing channel.
However, here is the most pertinent question for any marketer today. Given the fact that there are over 293 billion emails being sent every day, how can you ensure your brand stands out in your prospect’s inbox to drive engagement?
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Today more than ever, customers are checking their inboxes to discover business emails that offer value. Consider these statistics for example.
What this means, if done the right way, your emails will be read, shared and appreciated by your prospects. This has a significant impact on your lead generation efforts! As per statistics, email marketing generated $42 in revenue for every $1 spent, resulting in an astounding 4,200% ROI.
So, while email marketing within the B2B segment offers a perfect opportunity to engage with your prospect, it is imperative to do it right in order to succeed. For instance, sending targeted, personalized and resonating messages will be critical to drive engagement.
Today, we will highlight the nine most useful email marketing best practices. This will generate an immediate uplift in your marketing efforts thus, resulting in a boost in the quality and quantity of lead generation.
Allow us to share some of the best practices to help drive engagement with your prospects. This engagement leads to building a relationship of trust and credibility with your prospects thus, generating a boost in your lead generation efforts.
Segmenting your email lists is a critical email marketing tactic. It is the best way to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. Research reveals that segmented email campaigns have a 50% higher CTR than non targeted email campaigns.
With segmentation, you can create a personalized journey to nurture your leads. Those who are at the top of the sales funnel should be sent educational messages to help them learn about the product or service category, in general. This is not the time to “push your product”, this is the time to build a relationship of trust so anything you can do to help them learn the nuances of your “sandbox” will allow your prospect to start trusting you.
When it comes to B2B email marketing, the overall design and layout of your email is highly important. Clean, concise, and clear emails that are easy to skim and interact with are imperative. You have less than 3 seconds to grab their attention so this may be one of those times where ‘less is more’.
Here are a few points to remember while drafting a B2B email:
Below is an example of a clear and concise email from a website building and hosting company-Webflow.
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Among the most relevant B2B email marketing best practices is a focus on crafting the perfect subject line. Remember, having a personalized, succinct and resonating subject line can make the difference between your campaign securing high open rates or going straight to the trash folder.
So get creative by using bold or italic fonts or emojis to grab the attention of the users. Also, make sure to opt for shorter subject lines with 28 to 39 characters as it works very well with mobile users. Lastly, remember that personalized subject lines have a 22% higher open rate than non-personalized ones.
Every email should include a strong and compelling CTA that entices your prospects to engage and share. To ensure a persuasive CTA, use creative language that will instantly grab their attention. Remember, the most effective CTAs are the ones that educate, share and not ‘sell’..
Depending on your product or service, you can use text like “Book Now”, “First 50 get … ”, “Let’s talk!”, etc. Also, make sure to restrict the CTA to only 2-3 words.
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Reaching out to the decision makers might seem like the right thing to do, but B2B sales cycles are a bit more complex than that. A B2B sales cycle involves influencers AND decision makers and it is not uncommon for an influencer(s) to have more leverage than a decision maker. For example, an Engineering Department – an influencer – might have more leverage than a Procurement Department – a decision maker.
Each segment – influencers and decision makers – has disparate motivating factors and are gauged differently within an organization. Hence, it is important to understand their pain points and to craft specific and personalized emails that address those pain points. This will result in a resonating communication for the respective audience, in turn, driving engagement. In other words – One size does NOT fit all!
Marketing Automation is a smart tool that allows marketers to send the right message to the right people at the right time. It triggers automatic and personalized email messages based on the user’s actions. For instance, a company can automate welcome emails when a prospect requests additional information from a website form submit.
As per research conducted by Campaign Monitor, automated personalized emails generate 320% more revenue as compared to non-automated emails.
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Split testing your emails is a great way to identify what is working and what is not.
By conducting A/B testing on all aspects of your email marketing campaigns including the subject line, the CTA, the copy, the layout, etc, you ensure the optimal engagement for your email campaigns. Consistent engagement will result in a relationship of trust with your prospect. It is THIS relationship that will create the highest probability to convert a prospect to a customer. The old sales adage – “People have to buy into you to buy from you” still holds true!
One of the best ways to nurture leads and convert them to customers is by offering high-quality, relevant, and informative content that helps them – educates them, makes them better at their respective roles, etc.
A marketing automation platform is instrumental in mapping prospects to their respective buying journeys and stages within those journeys. For instance, a prospect in the awareness stage – top of the sales funnel – should receive more educational content like white papers, for example and prospects that are at the bottom of the sales funnel should receive more case studies, spec sheets, product-specific content, etc.
All in all, the content strategy in the top half of the funnel should help your brand build a relationship of trust with the prospects whereas the second-half of the funnel needs to focus on establishing the credibility for your brand to deliver on the trust.
According to Adobe, 85% of users use their smartphones to access email. And this staggering statistic clearly demonstrates the importance of drafting mobile-friendly emails.
If your emails fail to render appropriately on mobile devices, it will adversely impact your campaign’s success. A few suggestion to help avoid this
When it comes to B2B marketing, email marketing has proven to be one of the most effective marketing channels. If done correctly, the results provide unambiguous ROI.
Time and again, I have seen manufacturing companies elevate their lead generation efforts for customer acquisition by using the above-mentioned B2B email marketing best practices. These practices have enabled manufacturing companies to consistently grow their sales in double digits. Give it a shot and prove it to yourself!
With over two decades of experience, Parin leads an expert demand-generation agency, StratMg, that helps industrial manufacturing clients achieve unambiguous and quantified organic sales growth across the US, EMEA & APAC.
Parin has built & positioned StratMg to be a value-added marketing services provider that strives to create a culture of quantified sales-driven marketing initiatives leading to sustained business growth through channel management, diversification, new customer acquisition and retention strategies and tactical execution.
