Editorial
The Gist
- Campaign precision. Pinpoint your ideal client profile for more effective B2B email campaigns.
- List quality matters. Maintain a validated, high-quality email list to boost engagement and ROI.
- Engage, don't ask. Provide valuable resources over sales pitches to enhance B2B email effectiveness.
In a crowded digital environment rife with companies clamoring for attention at every click, B2B email marketing remains a powerful tool for engaging with B2B prospects to generate quality leads. The reason: Most of your target market isn’t actively searching for your solutions, so it’s more effective to go to them and generate interest (demand generation) than it is to wait for them to find you (demand capture).
5 Steps to B2B Email Marketing Gold
The challenge: 9.7 billion emails are sent in the U.S. daily so standing out requires a calculated approach. Below are five steps for creating effective email campaigns that resonate with prospects and fuel demand.
1. Understand & Target Your Top Ideal Client Profile (ICP)
Effective B2B email marketing starts with a clear target.
Define your ICP based on your most successful client relationships, by industry, company size, and titles of decision-makers and influencers. For example, we ran a successful campaign targeting owners/CEOs of rental service providers in the U.S. between $20 million and $250 million in revenues for an integrator of ERP systems.
It’s common to have at least three-to-four distinct ICPs. Focus on the one with the most potential for several months to gain traction.
Related Article: Things I’ve Read About Email Marketing That Are Simply Wrong
2. Build & Maintain a High-Quality Email List
A robust B2B email marketing list of your top target market is key to the success of your campaign. Begin by sourcing contacts from reputable services like ZoomInfo. UpLead and BookYourData offer more cost-effective alternatives.
To ensure deliverability and maintain your sender reputation, run your list through validation services such as ZeroBounce. This minimizes bounce rates and avoids penalties from platforms like HubSpot, which enforce strict bounce rate limits.
Related Article: The Email Marketing Trends That Are Seeing Adoption & Success
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3. Craft Active, Compelling Content
B2B email marketing content that educates your prospects about how you can solve their problems is the core of email marketing. This is the essence of B2B brand storytelling: Prospects are the hero of the story and will let you be their guide if you demonstrate that you understand their problems. Don’t lead with products, services, features and benefits.
Give your top ICP something instead of asking for something. Offer resources that encourage engagement, such as guides, webinar invitations, case studies, and relevant blog posts. Don’t send fluffy, top-of-funnel content or newsletters that ramble on about your business. Videos can triple your click-through rates compared to other content types.
Include an offer: a clear, compelling call-to-action (CTA) that encourages recipients to take the next step. It should be something better than “request a free consultation” or “get a demo,” which they may want later but not as a starting point.
4. Optimize Subject Lines & Preview Text
Your subject line and preview text are crucial for grabbing attention and boosting open rates. It could be argued that this is the most important part of the entire email since without a subject line that gets your recipient to open it, the rest is like that tree that falls in a forest, unheard.
In B2B email marketing, subject lines and preview text need to be concise, engaging, positive and relevant to the recipient’s problems. For guidance, consider a formula proven over the past 100 years that combines appealing to the self-interest of prospects, sharing news, stimulating curiosity, and communicating that there’s a quick and easy way to solving problems while creating a sense of urgency.
5. Manage Expectations & Follow Up
B2B email marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. Initial prospecting emails typically achieve open rates between 10% to 20%, and it's common to receive few responses at first. While knowing 80% to 90% of recipients won’t open your email can be discouraging, persistence is key so follow up with recipients who click on your emails or open them multiple times. Note: If you see that someone has clicked on every link in the email, it’s likely that automated software opened it to check for viruses and phishing scams.
Personalized follow-up emails and calls can significantly enhance engagement and conversion rates but limit your follow-up attempts to no more than three. Keep them on your B2B email marketing list so that the next email may prompt them to contact you. Sometimes an email campaign gets a response months after it was sent because it was the right message at the wrong time.
While digital communication is prevalent, traditional direct mail can complement your B2B email marketing campaigns. With some audiences, a well-crafted direct mail piece can garner more attention than an email, making it an effective tool for reaching your audience in a different format and reinforcing your message.
B2B Marketing Email Campaigns That Work
When it’s done well, B2B email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective outbound methods for generating demand by connecting you to high-quality leads who aren’t actively searching for your solutions.
Anyone who tells you otherwise likely didn’t put the right level of effort into their campaigns. Some just send a few emails, get disappointed, and abandon the effort.
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