Why You Need a B2B Email Marketing Agency

It’s no secret that everyone benefits from marketing, even business-to-business brands!

Unfortunately, this complex business transaction is rarely as simple as it seems. It’s not a LEGO brick; you can’t mix and match! Your marketing manager must understand your brand’s industry and vision. More importantly, they must know how to tailor your email marketing strategy to your audience’s expectations.

Many businesses make the mistake of assuming they can handle this on their own.

Today, I’m here to show you why your email marketing should not depend on a tiny team of in-house marketers.

What Is B2B Email Marketing?

I’ll start by summarizing the role of B2B email marketing.

Unlike B2C (business-to-consumer), its more glamorous cousin, B2B email marketing focuses on maintaining high-quality leads and catering to a sophisticated subscriber list. Generally, B2B campaigns are more in-depth than similar B2C marketing. It also faces tougher limitations. In addition to standard spam filters and blacklists, B2B email marketing campaigns must also pass through recipients’ built-in enterprise email provider!

But that doesn’t mean B2B marketing is an entirely different beast; it’s more like a different breed. It still fulfills the same purpose of B2C email marketing, providing a critical link between prospects and vendors.

What Skills Must a B2B Marketing Manager Have?

Now, let’s say you wanted to hire an in-house development team. Technical details aside, you’ll need a highly experienced team of well-versed professionals. They must be fully briefed on your brand’s goals, identity, and vision. And — most importantly — they must have a deep, unshakable connection with your target audience.

You’re looking for people who know more than the basics of the email industry. You need pros who can master your email strategy without sacrificing your brand’s image. And it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that these marketing unicorns possess many skills. Some of the most commonly used skill sets in modern email marketing include…

• Communication: Besides the day-to-day office chatter, all email marketers must manage expectations and deliver performance updates.  Communication skills also influence a marketer’s ability to effectively segment and manage potential customers.
• Copywriting: The content of an email matters even more in B2B marketing! Your highly qualified leads are well-educated industry pros, and you must address them as such. You’ll need more than bare-bones targeted copy; you’ll need accurate and reliable copy.
• Design: Even professionals want beautiful emails! Don’t send a wall of text to a marketing lead. A well-designed campaign can improve email performance and direct customers to other marketing channels.
• Implementation: Email automation requires varying degrees of logic and planning. Even a simple holiday campaign may require several conditional qualifiers.
• Legal Knowledge: Even the most disruptive advertising must follow the law! A clever email campaign won’t mean much if it doesn’t abide by local regulations. So, if your heart is set on having an in-house developer, you must find marketers who understand the legal limits of marketing.
• Planning: Your schedule influences email deliverability. The best marketers understand this and can create campaigns that reach the right person at the right time. Generally, an email account manager works with a pre-filled content calendar to maintain constant contact throughout the year.
• Strategy: You obviously need a tactician to plan your email marketing strategy. Think of them as your email marketing’s commander. They plan your campaigns, manage your business’ digital identity, and craft the overall buyer’s journey.

Who Uses B2B Email Marketing?

So, who would these multitalented experts serve?

The B2B email marketing sphere is infinitely diverse. Any brand can tap into the boundless potential of email marketing! Some of the biggest supporters of B2B email marketing are remote work solutions, SaaS brands, and warehouses. However, the utility of this marvelous marketing channel isn’t limited to those three industries!

With the help of a digital agency, any B2B brand can amplify its impact. After all, email marketing is just another way of connecting with prospects. It’s a versatile, accessible way for marketers and sales reps to reach your target market. Email communication has remained one of the top digital marketing efforts for a reason. It works, and its ability to supercharge your lead generation is as relevant now as it was forty-some years ago.

Why a Skilled Email Marketing Manager Matters

One of the biggest mistakes I see is the assumption that B2B and B2C email marketing are interchangeable; they’re not! (Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this, would I?)

The short version is that email marketing efforts must match the brand’s goals. You can’t cut and paste a clothing company’s “50% off” campaign into a payroll software’s content calendar. Well… You can, but it won’t deliver results!

So, why are these email campaigns so different? They’re both conversion-driven marketing emails. They’re both drip campaigns. They might even use the same email templates! But they will never use the same strategy.

Those Emails Go to a Different Audience

One of the biggest differences between B2B and B2C email marketing is the audience.

Regardless of the specifics, every B2B email marketing campaign is going to a well-versed professional. You’re catering to more qualified leads and a highly educated audience. This is particularly obvious to anyone who’s struggled with cold emailing! You’re constantly battling the urge to simplify and over-explain your content. After all, your subscriber list already knows the otherwise “forbidden” industry language you’re using. In many cases, they probably understand the fundamentals of your services, too.

Your job is not (usually) to convince them to spend money! Instead, you want them to notice and engage with your company. You need customer engagement over raw conversion rates, and you don’t get those results from B2C marketing emails.

Retention Is the Core of Your Email Marketing Strategy

Allow me to build on that idea.

One cannot survive on exposure alone. You still need conversions and revenue. However, B2B brands have much longer sales funnels than most B2C companies. (The only exceptions to this rule are products with long lifespans, e.g., mattresses and appliances.) Thus, click-through rates, constant contact, and retention are essential pieces of a successful B2B email marketing strategy.

Moreover, this commitment to long-term relationships with every marketing lead complicates email implementation. You’re not designing two or three different, generic campaigns; no, you’re creating (seemingly) individualized messages for various stages of your sales funnel! And that is — dare I say it — a very impressive thing.

And you can do this alone. You can create countless variants of each campaign, carefully tweaking elements to fit your prospects. You can craft an attractive design and conjure up dozens of attention-grabbing subject lines.

But why would you?

An email marketing agency helps you save time and work efficiently. They take the work off your hands, freeing your team to tackle crucial business problems. The top email marketing agencies will even amplify your B2B email marketing services with stunning cold emailing campaigns and cross-channel marketing plans.

You’re Tackling Different Marketing Channels

Speaking of cross-channel marketing…

That brings me to my last point! B2B email marketing caters to different marketing channels.

Your subscriber list is more interested in professional web pages and industry sites. Summarily, LinkedIn has more B2B appeal than Facebook.

You’ll also find B2B email marketing less forgiving than B2C strategies. There’s a fine line between efficient follow-up emails and disruptive advertising. Brief welcome emails will be ignored, yet lengthy campaigns are equally unwelcome. You’re constantly juggling attention spans, busy schedules, informative content, and nurturing prospects.

In many ways, B2B email marketing is closer to sales than most consumer-facing campaigns. Your customers are often high-level executives who have no tolerance for fumbling, bumbling content. You have a few minutes to pack a message with enough content to sway your leads. And — should you fail to do so — your company is out the door!

Why Your Brand Needs an Agency’s Email Marketing Services

Fortunately, there’s a way to handle these many facets of modern B2B email marketing!

A well-versed email marketing agency can make your strategy shine. Its team is always ready to tackle a challenge, and its content is sure to resonate with your target audience. More importantly, unlike internal B2B email marketing services, an outsourced email marketing team delivers high-quality results at an affordable price.

Stay Informed About Your Email Marketing

While a competent in-house account manager also delivers this service, an email marketing agency guarantees consistent access to your vital marketing statistics.

For example, with The Email Marketers, you can easily get a live update on your campaign performance with little more than a phone call or email! The numbers include your key performance indicators (KPIs) — e.g., click-through rates, open rates, and conversions. You’ll also get regular, scheduled analytical updates from your account manager, which will help guide your marketing to its fullest potential!

Remember: Email marketing is an outstandingly powerful channel. As of 2022, 77% of companies cite emails as a key source of B2B lead generation and engagement. Moreover, 90% of marketing professionals praise the monetary power of the humble email inbox! It’s a convenient all-in-one package, ready to push sales and convey your message at any time.

Avoid the Content Slump

Thanks to their size and scope, email marketing agencies are a remarkable source of knowledge. The dedicated experts behind every team are an unstoppable force of creativity, and you can harness their power to supercharge your company revenue.

Remember all that talk about “constant contact?”

Well, here’s the secret nobody wants to say aloud: It’s very, very hard to create a near-infinite stream of content. And that doesn’t touch visual designs and subject lines. Fortunately, email marketing agencies have plenty of people who have many ideas. You’ll never worry about a creative drought; your account manager has your back. Whatever you need, there’s someone to create it.

That means your subscriber list will always have a steady stream of top-tier content. Your customers get what they want, and your company thrives.

A Marketing Agency Covers Everything

And it would be a crime if I forgot to mention that an agency — just like a great in-house development crew — takes a holistic approach to every campaign. For example, at The Email Marketers, you can expect an end-to-end process that looks something like this:

1. Concept: Your marketing team begins with a concept. This idea is a rough overview of the campaign, which may include buyer personas and interactive campaign elements. Actually, they’ll have many concepts spanning multiple campaigns.
2. Copywriting: A skilled team of writers drafts your campaigns. They’ll create an outline that optimizes your open rates without sacrificing your brand’s image. The copywriting team is also responsible for your eye-catching subject line.
3. Design: The visual artists of The Email Marketers match your business’ image. Campaigns utilize a mix of pre-made templates and custom-built content to convey your message.
4. Implementation: The coding pros take over and guarantee your leads a smooth, seamless experience. In addition to standard services, the implementation team is responsible for developing customized solutions and any necessary tools for your email campaigns. Unlike an internal team, a marketing agency has plenty of resources to create truly stunning emails!
5. Testing: Finally, every good agency tests its emails. Even the simplest of welcome emails can be improved, and testing guarantees more leads and less list abandonment!

Change Your Strategy to Fit Your Sales

How is that possible?

Well, unlike a small in-house marketing team, a great marketing agency has the workforce to handle any campaign. They have people dedicated to maintaining their services. This means you get a remarkable amount of flexibility! You can easily scale your marketing campaigns to match your sales, further optimizing your cash flow.

This unprecedented control is particularly important in the B2B email marketing world, where sales depend on connections. A B2B email marketing agency has the tools you need to grow, and it will grow with you! Exceptional providers, such as The Email Marketers, will even bolster your cause with customized services to nurture your lead generation and expansion.

Find the Perfect Email Marketing Partner for Your B2B Needs

It may sound too good to be true, but this is no fantasy!

You can achieve these results, but you need the right email marketing partner. That’s why I founded The Email Marketers. My team of marketing pros are more than happy to tackle your business needs. We’ll help you create an email marketing strategy that astonishes everyone!

Take a leap of faith! See the difference our services can make in your business. Schedule a free strategy session to learn how we’ve helped countless businesses expand their B2B email marketing empire. I’ll walk you through the creation process and the tools we use to create stunning content for your prospects.o

Together, we can amplify your campaigns to the next level!