9 Proven B2B Email Marketing Best Practices to Help You Get Started

9 proven

Table of Contents

Are you looking to get started with email marketing for your B2B business? If so, you’re in luck! In this blog post, we will discuss 9 of the best email marketing practices that will help you achieve success. We’ll cover everything from creating an effective strategy to designing beautiful emails that will engage your audience. So whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro, these tips will help you take your email marketing to the next level!

When it comes to email marketing, one of the most important things you can do is create a strategy. This will help you determine your goals, who your target audience is, and what type of content you should be sending them. Without a solid strategy in place, it will be very difficult to see success with your email marketing efforts.

Once you have your strategy in place, it’s time to start designing some beautiful emails! Remember, the goal here is to engage your subscribers and get them to take action. So make sure your emails are well-designed and include compelling copy that speaks to their needs.

And last but not least, always make sure you’re testing different elements of your email campaigns. This could include things like the subject line, call to action, or even the time of day that you send your emails. By testing different aspects of your campaigns, you’ll be able to fine-tune your approach and ensure that you’re getting the best results possible.

So there you have it! 9 of the best email marketing practices to help you get started. Implement these tips and you’ll be well on your way to seeing success with your B12B email marketing efforts. Good luck!

The 9 email marketing tips we discussed are:

– Creating a strategy:

This will help you determine your goals, who your target audience is, and what type of content you should be sending them.

– Testing different elements of your campaign:

This could include things like the subject line, call to action, or even the time of day that you send your emails. By testing different aspects of your campaigns, you’ll be able to fine-tune your approach and ensure that you’re getting the best results possible.

– Determining your goals:

What do you want to achieve with your email marketing campaign? Do you want to increase sales, drive traffic to your website, or build brand awareness? Once you know your goals, you can create a strategy that will help you achieve them.

– Identifying your target audience:

Who are you trying to reach with your email marketing campaign? What are their needs and interests? By understanding your target audience, you can create emails that will resonate with them and get them to take action.

– Deciding what type of content to send them:

What type of content will appeal to your target audience and help you achieve your goals? This could be anything from educational articles to product discounts.

– Making sure your emails are well-designed:

Your email should be visually appealing and easy to read. Include images, videos, or infographics to make your email more engaging.

– Writing compelling copy:

Your email copy should be persuasive and convince the reader to take action. Use strong headlines and call-to-actions to grab their attention.

– Testing different elements:

Subject lines, call-to-actions, images, etc. By testing different aspects of your email, you can see what works best and fine-tune your approach.

– And always testing different aspects of your email campaigns:

By testing different aspects of your campaigns, you’ll be able to fine-tune your approach and ensure that you’re getting the best results possible.

By following these best practices, you’ll be able to set your B12B email marketing up for success. So what are you waiting for? Get started today and see the amazing results for yourself!

What Is Email Marketing?

Though email has been around for a while, it is still one of the most useful digital marketing tools. Newer methods like social media and live chat have their advantages, but with such a large user base (4.5 billion people), email reigns supreme when it comes to marketing channels.

Is Email Marketing Outdated?

Despite the popularity of social media, email is still used more than other platforms. After all, what’s the use of marketing to someone who isn’t reading it? According to statistics, the majority of individuals are on email—and this number is growing every year.

Not only that, with email marketing, you own the connections and don’t have to worry about algorithm changes hurting your reach. nStill not persuaded? Four out of five marketers would rather give up social media than email marketing, according to HubSpot.

The Fundamentals of Email Marketing

Before we get into the strategies for email marketing, let’s go over the basics. These tips will help you make the most of your campaign so that you can see success moving forward.

  1. Stay Human: Email marketing is both popular and competitive, which means it has a high degree of competition. Use email to engage with your users on a personal level, as well as utilize their name and allow them to get a glimpse of your company’s humanity.
  2. Use Engaging Titles, But Don’t Bait And Switch: Use interesting subject lines to boost email open rates, but keep them on topic and non-spammy. Users will be dissatisfied if they believe they’ve been fooled, and this may lead to their unsubscribing or marking your message as spam, which has an impact on deliverability.
  3. Keep Messages Short: Keep your email copy concise since most people read their emails on mobile devices. If you need to share a lot of information, direct users to a blog post or landing page instead.
  4. Include CTAs at the Top and Bottom: On landing pages, CTAs are always visible above the fold; use the same approach on email by inserting powerful CTAs after the first paragraph and again at the conclusion.
  5. Ask Permission and Deliver On Your Promises: investing in email lists is rarely a productive or legal strategy, so focus on crafting quality content and deals instead.

How Does Email Marketing Work?

In the world of online marketing, email marketing is one of the most effective. It’s quite simple and frequently automated, which contributes to its success. It can also aid with lead creation, sales, and content marketing.

An effective email marketing campaign requires three essential elements;

1. An Email List

An email list is a database of subscribers who have given you permission to send them emails. To build successful email campaigns, you need an active, engaged email list.

There are many ways to build an email list. One of the easiest is to create a lead magnet (also called an offer) your target audience is interested in, like a coupon or free e-book, in exchange for their contact information.

2. An Email Service Provider

Email service providers (ESP), also known as email marketing platforms, are software that help you manage your email list subscribers and design+send automated email campaigns.

Utilizing an ESP also allows you to set up automatic triggers when certain actions are completed by your audience– for example, sending a cart reminder if a user adds an item to their cart but doesn’t finish the purchase. These types of personalized interactions improve engagement and open rates.

3. Clearly Defined Goals

Email can help you various business goals, such as:

  • increase sales
  • one of the best ways to increase brand awareness is through online advertising.
  • Create, collect, and nurture leads
  • Customers are more likely to engage with your brand if they feel invested in it.
  • Use Proof to keep customers coming back and spending more money.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Email Marketing

The benefits and drawbacks of email marketing are comparable to those of any other marketing channel. Let’s take a look at some of the more vital ones:

Advantages of Email Marketing:

Email marketing provides a plethora of advantages. Here are several benefits to remember.

-Email Is Permission-based:

When a customer provides you with their email address, it’s similar to being handed the keys to their house. With permission instead of uninvited entry, there is a higher probability for engagement and conversion.

-Provides Direct Access to Your Audience:

You may address your audience right on their own timeframes. Furthermore, because most people check email multiple times a day, your message is more likely to be seen.

-Email Provides More Control:

Unlike with most other marketing platforms, you own the platform with email. If the platform disappears, so will all of your efforts. Your reach may be significantly reduced if Google or Facebook changes their algorithm. However, with email, you have complete control over your subscribers’ connections.

-More Personalization Capabilities:

You may utilize demographic or psychographic data to develop highly targeted advertising. Segmented, personalized campaigns have been shown to result in revenue increases of up to 760 percent.

-Easy to Measure Success:

Automated email marketing is an important tool in measuring the success of a marketing campaign, and it’s simple to measure with.

-Scalable:

As your email list grows, so does the potential to expand your reach and ROI–without additional strain on your resources.

Disadvantages of Email Marketing

Emailing certainly has its perks, but there are a few disadvantages to keep in mind. The good news is that with proper forethought and execution, many of these disadvantages can be mitigated or even negated entirely. such as:

-Tough Competition:

With so much competition in inboxes these days, how can you make sure your emails get noticed? By being creative, of course!

-You Need an Email List:

You must already have an email list for your campaigns to be effective when using email marketing. It might be difficult to build an email list and takes time.

-Many Rules and Regulations to Navigate:

There are a number of laws that regulate the use of email for commercial purposes. GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CCPA are just a few examples. All of these restrict businesses from sending unsolicited emails and set data storage requirements. Unfortunately, some subscribers may mark your emails as spam despite their subscription.

-Delivery and Deliverability Issues:

Your email might not be delivered- many email providers have spam filters.

Best Email Marketing Strategies

Designing successful email campaigns is critical to ensuring your organization’s success. Here are some of the most effective tactics you may use.

Use the Right Email List-Building Strategies:

The effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns is dependent on the quality of your mailing list. To create a list, you must apply list-building techniques that are intended to get people interested in your target demographic.

Practice Good Email List Hygiene:

Another important email marketing method is maintaining clean email lists. Remove dormant subscribers and incorrect addresses from your list to enhance your sender reputation. Consider sending an email to those who haven’t opened your messages and asking whether they’d still be interested. If they aren’t, remove them from the list.

Keep Your List Warm:

Keep your subscribers engaged by regularly sending them emails. If you only email them sporadically, they may forget who you are and be less likely to convert.

If some of your subscribers go cold, try running a re-engagement campaign through paid ads.

Focus on One Objective:

Create separate campaigns and emails for each objective. It’s impossible to hit two (or more) birds with one stone when it comes to email marketing. It just confuses your recipients and lowers your conversion rates.

Define and Track the Right KPIs:

More than just sending out emails to subscribers every few weeks is required for a campaign to succeed. To determine which strategies are successful, you must measure the performance of your campaigns. That implies determining and recording the proper key performance indicators (KPIs).

Email completes your content marketing strategy

Content marketing should be a key element of any online business plan. It’s usually the first step in acquiring customers. Your content helps potential customers learn more about what you have to offer, and decide whether or not they want to buy from you. Email can be a great way to promote your latest blog post, webinar, giveaway, or other special deal to your subscribers.

Choosing the best email service provider

Before we get into the nitty gritty of how to create a successful email marketing campaign, let’s spend a few moments discussing email marketing services and whether or not you need one in the first place. In theory, doing all of these things, such as creating signup forms, creating email templates, segmenting your audience, and even sending emails yourself without using email marketing services is possible.

Although the process would be very demanding in terms of both resources and time, there are many technical aspects of email marketing about which most marketers are unaware. For example, few know how to design their email templates so that they function properly on diverse devices and with different email clients. Another issue is learning how to deal with bounces or spam complaints without being flagged by spam filters–which can cause major problems moving forward.

The silver lining is that most popular email marketing services have amazing tools as well as experienced in-house professionals who will assist you every step of the way until your marketing emails are launched successfully…and beyond!

Growing your email list

One of the primary ongoing duties of an email marketer is to maintain a growing email list. You want to be able to interact with a large and active audience inside their email inboxes. There are several methods for gathering a large email list. Let’s look at some of the most popular strategies and tools for obtaining a top-quality list. If you’d like to learn more, check out our in-depth tutorial on how to create an email list from scratch.

Segmenting your email list

As opposed to sending mass emails, email marketing allows you to segment your list and send targeted campaigns. This is done through segmentation, which is the process of identifying groups of customers with shared characteristics. By tailoring your communications to better meet their expectations and needs, you can achieve higher engagement and conversion rates.

Personalized emails see on average an uplift of 19% in the click-through rates, as stated in Email Marketing Benchmarks report data. Segmenting your audience will depend on the type of business you’re running or your email marketing campaign’s goal. For example, if you are a nonprofit organization then you might want to look at the average donation size of customers while an ecommerce brand may be more interested in a segment that purchased items recently.

The best time to send email

In some situations, it’s just as essential to send an email as what you send. Finding the ideal moment to deploy email campaigns begins with getting to know your consumers and testing different methods. When is your store most popular? That data allows you to see into your customers’ routines and schedules, allowing you to build a better email marketing campaign.

You can use Google Analytics to determine when consumers make the most of their purchase. You’ll need ecommerce setup if you want to track peak purchasing periods with Google Analytics. Lifecycle emails—which are delivered based on certain customer actions—need a little more fine-tuning. The optimum moment to send an abandoned cart email, for example, may differ depending on why customers abandon their carts and how you intend to react.

In Email Marketing For B2B, Content Is King

Let’s start at the beginning before we go into the fundamentals of email marketing. Automation, targeting, and drip campaigns have grown in importance to the point that they are no longer considered best practices; rather, they are the basis for today’s email marketing.

Drip Emails: One Single Email Just Won’t Cut It

Consider the scenario of a person from a manufacturing company subscribing to your list. For example, you provide raw materials.

People don’t want to invest in raw materials on the spur of the moment. You’ll have to deal with lengthy buying cycles, so a series of well-planned B2B emails spread out over an extended period of time based on event triggers would be preferable.

In other words, the heart of this approach is email sequences and drip emails that get the most out of them.

How To Target Your Content: Aim for the DMU

If you want your B2B email marketing campaign to be successful, you’ll need to get the right people onto your email list. It’s easy to think that you should target decision-makers like company directors or CEOs, but titles don’t mean as much as they used too. For example, if you search LinkedIn using the “CEO” filter, how can tell the difference between a restaurant owner, CEO of a startup company, and CEO of cruise line?

You’ll need to utilize a variety of criteria in order to get the right people onto your list. On its own, company size is more likely to be a better criterion for finding the appropriate kind of audience. Also, because decisions are rarely made by a single person, you may need to target many people within an organization. The Decision-Making Unit (DMU) in an organization is a group of individuals who make decisions.

A DMU typically contains people with various responsibilities who will review your emails from their distinctive perspective. Therefore, to connect meaningfully with each one of these individuals, email segmentation becomes essential. Consequently, you can then write the best email messages possible that address the specific issues every individual in the group faces.

9 B2B Email Marketing Best Practices to Engage With Your B2B Audience

Here are nine tried-and-true B2B email marketing best practices for increasing reach, improving deliverability, and converting prospects into paying customers. Let’s get started!

1. Resonate With Your Tone

The way your email sounds creates expectations for the recipient, as first impressions have a big impact on how they will see your email. B2C emails often have attention-grabbing tones with calls to action like “buy now” or “sign up now.” This tone can also be fun and visually appealing.

2. Personalize Your Messages

Personalized email subject lines are one of the most important B2B email marketing best practices. A study conducted by Experian Marketing Services found that they can increase open rates by 29.3%. So whether you’re sending a welcome email or a marketing message, make sure to personalize your subject line for the best results.

You won’t be successful if you try to guess who your target audience is. If you utilize the knowledge and data from your current customers, though, you should be able to isolate the common qualities of your ideal consumers.

The Buyer Persona is a market segmentation concept that classifies customers by their desired characteristics. This may include a person’s name, industry, demographic information such as age and income level, psychographic information such as interests and values, and other data points. You may have one or more buyer personas that you target depending on your company strategy.

They allow for better B2B email marketing campaigns, as your emails:

  • Can be highly personalized and targeted
  • Can be sent at an appropriate time for your audience
  • Allow you to use other relevant channels to get the message to your desired audience

Here are a few ways to use that data to help develop your B2B email marketing best practices:

  • Use subject lines that are relevant to the topic of your email and convey the appropriate expectations.
  • Only ask questions that will give your audience usable information to make a decision.
  • Create separate lists for each time zone. Customers will receive notifications at the correct moment if you segment your list based on time zones.
  • Organize your list of leads according to different types of customers, or personas.
  • Use trigger emails to track lead actions.
  • Follow up with your contacts in a timely manner, but don’t overdo it.

3. Craft Subject Lines That Pique Interest

Here’s another email marketing best practice for you to consider. According to research, 64% of people read an email based only on the subject line. It’s obvious that subject lines are crucial in influencing open rates for any B2B email marketing campaign.

here are some principles to make you B2B Email subject Line better:

  • Ditch spam words and symbols in your subject line.
  • Aim for 17-24 characters.
  • Keep your subject line short, ideally 3-5 words.
  • Include at least 1 emoji in your subject line.

A/B testing your email subject lines will give you the information you need to make informed decisions in the future, but this email subject line tester also can help recipients open your message.

4. Validate Your Emails

There’s little sense in having a B2B email marketing strategy if your emails aren’t received by the intended recipient, is there? Ineffective emails and bounces will have an impact on the effectiveness of your email campaigns. They can also hurt your brand’s reputation.

5. Include a Call to Action

If you want to keep your customers interested and foster a relationship with them, send emails that nurture leads. Email marketing does this for 87% of B2B marketers. Simply put, your email content must be interesting enough to maintain customer attention.

How can you accomplish this? You may, for example, include a call to action to go to your landing page or provide visitors with several contact options. A question, the provision of useful information, or selecting an option depending on where they are in the buying process are all examples of calls to action.

The copy, or context surrounding your email template’s main call to action, is critical in determining whether new customers will actually follow through with what you’re asking.

How to create an amazing call to action that enhances clickthroughs:

  • The goal of your call-to-action is to persuade people to act or purchase a product or service. You must think about three important elements: the action you want readers to take, the words utilized, and the design of the call-to-action.
  • Make the CTA obvious so it answers the question: “What’s in it for me?”
  • Where you place your CTA button on a webpage will affect how noticeable and accessible it is to viewers.
  • The content in your emails should be engaging and lead recipients to take a desired action.
  • Provide clear instructions so the CTA can address the following questions: “What should they do?”, “Where will they go?”, and “Why should they follow through?”
  • Use tracking pixels and online image management software to ensure that alt-tags are visible even if your clients use image blocking.
  • Readers are more likely to click on logos and photographs, therefore make sure that these images are linkable or your email will be regarded as unreadable.

6. Segment Your List Around Interest Levels

In order to maintain your email content concise, you have to divide up your list into sections according to how interested your audience is in hearing from you.

A segmentation program can assist you separate your target audiences based on a variety of criteria such as age, income, prior purchases, email receptivity, and more. This will allow you to tailor the content and improve brand recognition.

7. Time It Right

When it comes to B2B email marketing, timing may be everything. While the optimum times vary depending on the audience and company, your analytics data may assist you in determining when to send your email to them.

8. Keep Messages On Point

When people offer you their email addresses, they are trusting you to provide them with content that is valuable and helpful. Therefore, it is crucial to make sure your messages are always relevant to the context that prompted someone to sign up for your list in the first place.

In other words, create email content that appeals specifically to your audience’s interests.

Here are a few tips to help keep your content on point:

  • Don’t send B2B marketing emails unless you have something truly helpful to share.
  • Keep your postings concise, easy to understand, and direct.
  • Create a great first impression with your website (if you need assistance, hire a professional writer).
  • Be careful not to saturate your audience with messages that are too sales-oriented.
  • Allow your email subscribers to choose the types and frequency of messages they receive for a more personalized experience.

Invest in a stunning design that will immediately draw your readers’ attention.

9. Omnichannel Coordination and Automation

Marketing automation has become important for B2B marketers in growing their business revenue. Customers use a variety of channels and sources to get information, therefore omnichannel marketing makes sense. A strong value proposition may help ensure that your automation and coordination efforts are geared toward the client’s needs. In other words, provide a hassle-free client experience. Email automation for B2B companies might be an excellent method to thank customers or prospects for taking action and lower the risk of them being confused, unsure, or annoyed.

Conclusion:

Email marketing is a powerful tool that can help you achieve success with your B2B business. By following the best practices we’ve outlined in this blog post, you’ll be able to create an effective strategy, design beautiful emails, and engage your audience. So what are you waiting for? Get started today!

Leave a Reply

Laura img 1

LAURA EGOCHEAGA

Before I became one of America’s top 5 growth hackers… I was included in Forbes’ 1000 to Watch List, I’ve spoken at the biggest tech conferences in the world including the CES and the Web Summit.

LATEST ARTICLES

Where Would You Like Us To Send Your Group Invite?