How to Improve your B2B Email Marketing Efforts: 5 Ways

There are more and more businesses and Startups coming up defining various niches more sharply. The competition to appeal to more and more customers is rising. Being a business, you must have invested a lot of time coming up with various kinds of strategies to appeal to customers. Still covering all aspects of how you can reach out to your audience can be challenging. A lot of businesses miss out on capitalizing on the immense potential of Email marketing.

We have seen many businesses making use of email marketing to a bare minimum. In rare cases, they send out emails and barely respond to the ones they receive. Many businesses and professionals do not have a well-defined strategy on how they’ll approach customers using email marketing.

If you wish to learn more about email marketing and have more effective B2B conversions, you have come to the right place. Here we explore the potential of email marketing and how you can tap into it to boost your B2B efforts.

Understanding B2B Marketing

B2B marketing or any other B2B activity essentially means the process of sales or transaction between two companies. For many companies, their audience or customers come out from a larger diffused public. However, many companies have other companies and businesses as their customers. Any transaction between these two companies is referred to as B2B (Business to Business).

Many companies do not think in terms of having a more specific B2B marketing strategy for their clients or customers. Mostly, people have a broader marketing strategy where B2B email marketing is not a well-defined contributor to it. However, having a dedicated email marketing strategy can boost your conversions tremendously.

Let’s look at a few numbers to give you a better picture.

Image: Oberlo

It is recorded that in 2017 alone around 290 billion emails were sent and received every day. This number was expected to cross 340 billion by 2021. This not only shows us how immensely emails are being used but also the kind of reach and the potential it has. Email marketing is extremely beneficial to businesses and the numbers back it up. It is estimated that for $1 you invest in email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42 (DMA, 2019). This is not just an investment to enhance your reach, share details and updates with your customers, but it impacts the conversions and profits you make.

A study showed that more than 72% of businesses were willing to share important information they received with other people they know through an email. This means that your B2B mails can be largely expected to be shared with people you haven’t sent directly.

Email marketing is robust, powerful, and effective. You must take that extra step because it can make a big difference in how you operate and what you make out as a business. In case you find yourself lost and do not know where to start or how to boost your existing B2B Email Marketing, we are here to help. Through this blogging guide, we’ll share with you some powerful tips on how you can boost your B2B email marketing efforts.

1. A Consistent Automated Flow

When it comes to email marketing, being consistent becomes crucial. If your emailer spiked the curiosity of a customer once and they don’t hear from you for a long time, they might not ever open another email, ever again. It is also possible that their curiosity might die out or they find better alternatives and your efforts will go to waste.

It’s perennial that once you add someone to your B2B mailing list, you send appropriate emails periodically. One thing that is of great help is that you can automate your emails so that you don’t have to worry about sending them every time.

It is understandable that running a business, working on an influential position in a company, or perhaps just having a small venture of your own can consume all your time. It’s pretty natural to miss out on each update and offer. However, many email marketing platforms let you automate your emails and schedule them for you. Mailchimp is one such platform. Some web hosting providers also offer a limited version of these services but we suggest you look for a dedicated email marketing platform.

Another important thing is that you must find the perfect timing of sending your mail. This means, that how often do you send them a mail, how often do you send a newsletter, is it weekly, once in 15 days or monthly? I would suggest not to go by case studies in this respect, be intuitive and see how you resonate with businesses you have in your mailing list, what kind of product/service you have, to what extent should this repetition exist.

Also Read: How to Build Your Email List as A Reliable Sales Channel

2. Target The Right Individuals

Often the biggest mistake people do while sending a B2B mail is that they address it to the CEO. Or perhaps they do not address it to any individual but the concerned person or the company in general. This weakens the purpose of mailing.

It is best if you put in some research before sending important emails and send them to the most appropriate individuals. To illustrate, if you need to send a catalog of your products to a company, who should you address it to? There may be a person dedicated to handling purchases for the company. That would be the right individual to target. Generally sending emails won’t materialize what you intend to do.

It is also great if you can tag a few more people from the company who hold an influential position. This way you penetrate deeper and have a better chance at conversion.

3. Avoid Spam

Suppose you have been putting a lot of research in your mails and putting a lot of effort in creating content, newsletters, etc. but your mails are going to the Spam folder of your target audience. That’s not good, it reduces your total no. of emails opened and clicks on your websites.

This happens because of missing authentication records. There are many ways of authenticating your email domain. You can authenticate your IP address with SPF, configure your DKIM signature, protect your domain with DMARC Authentication and also prepare for BIMI. Authenticating your domain will help you not go to the Spam and improve your click rates.

4. What Subject Line Works For You?

Once you have your mail in the inbox of your customer, the next thing that will make a huge difference in the open rates of your mails will be the kind of subject lines you use. Do not even think that putting some old sloppy subject line will work. Today’s average individual receives tens of emails daily. A great subject line lets your mail stand out from the rest. For example, see for yourself which of the following subject lines intrigues you.

First thing is that it is important what kind of brand image you have and want to reinforce. Another is the kind of clients you have. If you see it then perhaps you can make a more wise decision on how your subject line should be. You can be humorous, shock them, and much more.

There are a few psychological principles email marketers use and have come to be found as very effective.

• Principle of FOMO (Fear of missing out)
• Principle of Humour
• Principle of Curiosity
• Principle of Limited Choices
• Personalization principle
• Principle of Social Proof

Read about them and try to understand how the psyche of your customers works. These principles will help you etch out great subject lines.

Also Read: Improve Business Email Writing Skills: 10 Steps

5. Pay attention to your Banner

Once you open a mail, its header which has a banner is the first thing a person sees. It is a large visual element of your email. It is important that you give enough attention to your banner and how you create it. Your banner should catch their attention immediately and also intrigue them to scroll further. It is estimated that an average office worker receives 121 emails daily. This gives you a very brief window before they exit your mail.

Here’s an example of a great banner.

Thus, it is of prime importance that you design a banner that catches their attention, communicates clearly who you are, and influences them to scroll down.

Conclusion

If you have not already invested your time and effort in email marketing, you should start thinking on these lines. It has a great ROI and will add a completely different dimension to how you relate to your client. The numbers speak for themselves.

Do not waste too much time finding short easy ways to get to your clients, email marketing takes effort but yields amazing results. You can minimize the effort by automating various aspects of it and there are various platforms, tools, and software available to support you in that direction.

We hope this guide helped you reinforce your B2B email marketing strategy.