What is B2B Email Marketing?
B2B Email marketing is the practice of promoting your business to other businesses via email. It goes for both products as well as services. The purpose of it is to nurture business relation, increase brand awareness, and at the end generate sales.
It is affordable, customizable and can capture demand through different types of email for updates, announcements, product releases, and outbound marketing materials to generate brand awareness and potential leads.
The Email Campaign targets audiences through:
- Promotional emails
- Newsletter emails
- Survey emails
- Milestone emails
- Welcome emails
- Re-engagement emails
- Documents and other materials
The 5Ws of B2B Email Marketing
When
According to HubSpot, "The best timing to run them would be around 9 am-12 pm."
Who
The "Who" in email marketing refers to the C-suite, including the COO, Vice President, CFO, CEO, etc., who are the decision makers and target audience in the B2B industry.
What
B2B email marketing involves one Business pushing its products or services to other companies through email. Examples: Welcome emails, transaction emails, and retention emails.
Where
The "Where" factor here is like an endless sea. It provides you with where to focus, where not to focus, where to drop your campaign, etc. The endpoint of your campaign is the decision-maker's inbox. You can further expand your audience, location, and industry to where you experience a vast market with less supply.
Why
There are multiple reasons to support the statement. The most relevant reasons are its affordability and personalization. The firm's ROI increases by generating MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) and SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads) from the campaigns.
B2B VS B2C Email Marketing
B2B and B2C Email marketing are two different approaches. While this pair works based on many criteria and situations, all that unites them is the successive drive to create demand for a firm's capitalization.
Audiences and Messaging
The audiences differ hugely between B2B and B2C Email Marketing. B2B email marketing involves the marketing between businesses through emails to create brand awareness, retain customers, and generate demand. B2C Email Marketing deals with businesses' direct consumers or clients to generate demand to sell their service or product.
Tone and Voice
B2B predominantly pushes through a formal, professional tone with precise market research, while B2C pushes through a casual tone with an emotional connection with the consumer.
Design and Layout
If the design has a professional, direct approach focusing more on content, data, and a simple yet effective layout, you have received a B2B Email. If the same comes with a visually appealing design with wit and personality, you have received a B2C Email.
Timings
The best timing to send B2B Email is "Monday(s) and Thursday(s), around 9am-12 pm." For B2C Email marketing, weekends around 10 am-3 pm work better for overall click volumes and engagement.
Buying Cycle
B2C email marketing focuses directly on the customer so that their end-user and decision-maker remain in the same persona. B2B has a different and layered procurement process — it involves not only a single decision-maker but also multiple steps, multiple personas, and numerous end users.
Importance and Benefits of B2B Email Marketing
The investment in B2B email marketing remains lower compared to other paid campaigns, conveying its unique significance in marketing.
Affordability and Increase in ROI
ROI determines the company's growth and sustainability. Since these campaigns run at lower costs, their revenue comes with minimal investment and heightens the ROI. Survey: 50% of B2B Marketing Leads with the Highest ROI Now Come from Email.
Boosted Brand Awareness
Through emails, your audience gets to know who you are and what you do. If you keep them posted regularly and properly, you are no longer a regular email but a reputed brand to them.
Customer Retention and Relationship
Nurturing your customers constantly with your company's updates, upcoming products, and added features improves their trust and makes them return for the future too.
Mobile Friendly
According to a recent study from Litmus, "60% of all the emails sent were opened through a mobile device." The rise of mobile devices has paved the way for the growth of multiple businesses.
Personalized Content and Offers
Content can be personalized according to buying behaviour, persona, region, industry, and age group so each customer learns about the brand and proceeds further with the purchase.
Integration with Marketing Channels
Integrating B2B Email campaigns with social media increases the reach, impressions, and brand awareness of the product or service.
Top 5 B2B Email Marketing Strategies
Buyer Persona
Buyer personas are the fictional representation of your customer. They represent the image that embodies the characteristics and psychology of your buyers. Companies who segment their customers according to their persona experience a 97% increase in their website lead generation.
Develop Email List
Maintaining a database is the most critical agenda to drive revenue. Kipplo assists your B2B email marketing by providing you with precise and relevant contact information for profiles that can be added to your email list, saving much of your time.
Prioritize Drip Campaigns
Drip campaigns are pre-written automated messages sent to a specific set of customers for a predefined period of time. Instead of following up with each customer manually all the time, drip campaigns save time and labour to convey the message to the audience.
Cold Email Approach
Cold emailing is approaching potential and relevant contacts for the first time without having a prior contact. As far as you approach the right audience to solve their problem, it can have better results.
Tracking Results
Tracking your campaign performance is as important as initiating the campaigns. You need to track the key performing metrics and analyze them for better optimization.
SMART Goals:
- Specific: Define a specific and clear goal
- Measurable: Ensure you track and measure your progress
- Attainable: Stick to reality, and create a realistic goal
- Relevant: Make sure your goals align with the organization
- Timely: Mark your target date to be accountable and productive
Best Practices in B2B Email Marketing
Email Length
According to HubSpot, "The optimal email length is 50 to 130 words." All that matters in the mail is the brief content that brings results.
Personalization
Emails can be customized according to the target audience, and the format can be changed based on the results it gets from each campaign.
Segmentation
Classifying your email list by industry, job title, and location will assist you in creating more precise and target-based content that resonates with your audience.
Clear Subject Lines
Subject lines give the first impression of your email, so maintaining it as the best impression improves the CTR and open rate. Avoid using clickbait or misleading subject lines.
Value Sharing
Providing value such as discounts, coupons, whitepapers, and early access to sales will make customers feel valued and improve your brand reputation and reach.
Call-to-Action
The call-to-action (CTA) in your email is the entry gate to your customers' journey. It guides the user to your website or to download a resource. Keep it short and crisp.
Test and Optimize
Going for A/B testing and improving the campaign after a successful run could assist you in owning the success factor of the campaign and gives you an idea of how to drive the results at different stages.
Avoid Spam Fillers
Avoid the usage of spam fillers such as "buy now," "free," and "limited time only". Make sure that the emails you send are CAN-SPAM compliant.
Conclusion
B2B Email Marketing is the process of promoting your product or service to other businesses via email. The motto includes brand awareness, lead nurturing, customer relationship, and lead retention.
This type of marketing can be used at all stages of the sales funnel — TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU — for sale process and lead generation. B2B Email reaches the decision maker's inbox in the format of newsletters, posters, brochures, and value proposition documents, and brings greater ROI compared to other practices.
For assistance and maximum yield, you would need a data prospecting tool like Kipplo that makes your Email Marketing campaign easier and provides you with the relevant data of your targeted audience.