What is B2B Email Marketing?
Gone are the days when direct marketing was done by post or telephone. With the arrival of B2B email marketing, you can send your ads and offers to potential clients in no time! In fact, most businesses receive over 100 emails and send over 30 messages daily.
As you start with B2B email marketing, it’s vital to realize that campaigns come with challenges. Crafting an effective B2B email requires understanding that resonates with different types of buyers—all of which can be intimidating if you’re new to this email marketing tactic. This blog post will examine the importance of B2B email marketing efforts and why you should use them.
The Basics of B2B Email Marketing
B2B email marketing is an effective and affordable manner to advertise a brand’s content or services to other businesses.
Unlike B2C email marketing, which is focused on individual buyers, B2B email marketing is designed to nurture sales leads and convert them into what’s known as a marketing-qualified lead. This involves sending emails directly to decision-makers at companies that offer the potential for conversion.
Who Uses B2B Email Marketing?
Wondering who uses B2B email marketing and why? Well, in a word: everyone. Every business has its unique use case for using this tool.
To give you a better idea of who uses B2B email marketing, here are some examples:
- Manufacturing: Employ email marketing to showcase their products and services to other businesses and to convey special offers or promotions. They also use email marketing to gather customer testimonials and inform them of new feature releases and updates.
- Remote Teams and Freelancers: Often utilize B2B email marketing to stay connected with their team members and clients. It’s also a great way for them to keep track of progress and tasks that need to be completed.
- Warehousing: Use B2B email marketing to stay organized and track shipments, so business customers can easily locate items in their warehouses. They also use it to keep customers up-to-date on the status of orders and any changes occurring in the inventory.
- Marketing Software Companies: Employ B2B email marketing to promote a new feature, announce product updates, share customer journey success stories, or give recommendations for successful email campaigns. This is a great way for them to stay top of mind with current customers while also gaining new ones.
The Benefits of a B2B Email Marketing Strategy
A well-crafted B2B email marketing strategy can give your business several advantages. Done correctly, it is an excellent way to reach a much larger target market base and easily track your email marketing campaigns’ performance. Here are some of the reasons why you should make sure that email marketing is part of your business plan:
Consistently High ROI
For every dollar you spend on email marketing, you can expect to receive $44 back in return – making it one of the highest ROI channels available. You reap what you sow—invest a little and reap great rewards with little effort.
With B2B email marketing, you can easily track your results and measure your return on investment over time. This allows you to focus your efforts on what works best and makes it easier to identify areas where you could improve your approach and adjust accordingly.
Easily Track Your Results
Many email marketing services come with built-in analytics tools, enabling you to view and measure the success of your email campaigns.
Two most important metrics for any email campaign are the open rate and clickthrough rate. The open rate tells how many people opened your email, while the clickthrough rate reveals how many people clicked a link inside the message.
Both of these metrics can be tracked and monitored through your email marketing service’s analytics tool to gain valuable information about the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Reach More Potential Customers
Even if you have the best brand or service in the world, no one will know unless you tell them. As a marketer, email marketing allows you to reach a larger target audience and make a bigger impact than traditional marketing methods.
By targeting prospective customers with valuable content, you can increase your chances of getting them interested in your offer. Plus, with so many people using email these days, it’s easier than ever to reach new users around the globe.
Not only do you get more people to see your message, but you also get more accurate customer insights. You can track who is opening your emails, what messages they are clicking on, and which offers are converting — so that you can better tailor future campaigns for maximum effectiveness.
How B2B Email Marketing Campaigns Boost Your Engagement
Engaging with customers is essential for many businesses, and B2B email marketing campaigns can help you do that. Done correctly, this will cultivate long-term relationships with potential clients, increase brand recognition, and produce sales. Some examples may include:
- A personalized email subject line
- A credible email template
- Targeted discount codes
- Welcome email
- Cold emails
- An announcement email
Guide Your Buyer’s Journey
As customers become aware of their needs and are ready to explore options to address them, you want to be on their radar. By reaching out with tailored educational content and special email campaigns offering product demos or discounts, start building brand recognition and trust at this early stage of the buying process.
Usually, this process is done in three stages:
Awareness Stage: At this stage, prospective customers are just becoming aware of their problem or need and are looking for information to help them better understand it. To guide their brand, B2B marketers can:
- Address potential customer's pain points and challenges.
- Use social media profiles to build brand awareness.
- Use search engines (SEO) to ensure their website and content are easily discoverable.
Consideration Stage: At this stage, new subscribers have identified their problem or need and are now evaluating different solutions and providers. To guide their brand, B2B marketers can:
- Use email marketing to send targeted messages and content.
- Use webinars and live events to establish expertise and credibility.
- Use case studies and testimonials to demonstrate how their product or service has helped other businesses solve similar problems.
Decision Stage: Potential customers have evaluated different solutions and providers and are now ready to decide. To guide their brand, B2B marketers can:
- Encourage potential customers who have already engaged with their brand to take the next step in the buying process.
- Use personalized messaging and offers to incentivize potential customers to make a purchase.
- Use sales enablement tools and resources to help sales teams close deals and convert prospects into customers.
Reach New Customers With Educational Content
An education campaign in B2B marketing is designed to provide valuable and relevant information to prospects and ultimately generate leads and sales.
By providing content that educates customers and provides value to their decision-making process, you’re building trust and credibility with your target audience — increasing the likelihood that they’ll return to make purchases.
Some examples of educational content for B2B email marketing include:
- Webinars: Online events that provide education and training on a specific topic. Webinars can instruct registration and contact information and can also be used to establish expertise and credibility.
- Ebooks: Comprehensive guides that provide information and advice on a specific topic. Ebooks can generate leads by requiring contact information to download the guide and can also be used to establish thought leadership and provide value to prospects.
- Courses: Online training programs that provide comprehensive education on a specific topic. Courses can generate leads by requiring registration and contact information and can also be used to establish expertise and credibility.
- Infographics: Visual representations of data, information, and statistics designed to be easily understood. Infographics can be used to educate prospects on industry-specific trends and insights and can also be used to generate leads by requiring contact information to access the infographic.
Re-Engage Inactive Subscribers With Special Campaigns
Retargeting campaigns can be the most effective tool for re-engaging inactive subscribers that may seem no longer interested. With retargeting, you can create tailored messages based on users’ needs, demographics, and interests.
In B2B marketing, re-engagement email campaigns are particularly useful in maintaining long-term relationships as they are easy to track and measure through user engagement analytics. Specific strategies and tactics to get inactive subscribers on board with your email list, name it.
Re-engagement campaigns should include incentives, special offers, and promo codes exclusive to inactive customers. These re-engagement campaigns allow you to build relationships with previous customers and show their value by providing exclusive discounts or promotions that aren’t available to everyone else.
Amplify Your Marketing Efforts With Us
Wondering how you can make the most of your B2B email marketing efforts?
Rather than just relying on one channel to get your message out, you can amplify it by combining email campaigns with social media postings and website content. Worry no more! Contact us by tapping into our services, and let my crew at The Email Marketer get the most from every dollar spent on your campaigns!
We can help you build a comprehensive strategy that uses all available channels to create a targeted campaign that provides maximum results.