Marketing is a core for any business that wants to run its operations. In the changing world with creative demands, channel decisions, and budget limits, effective marketing could be difficult to get right and marketers have a lot to bluff when developing their marketing strategy.
The biggest determinant of effective marketing is, however, the audience. Target audiences vary according to your business, with some catering individual buyers while others serve organizations and companies.
B2C marketing target the interests and needs of individual customers who are making purchases on behalf of, or for themselves, thus making them the consumer. Whereas B2B marketing targets the challenges, interests, and needs of individuals who are rather than making purchases for themselves, purchasing on behalf of, or for their organization, thus making the organization the customer.
B2B email marketing
Marketing to businesses is very distinctive from marketing to individual shoppers, which is exactly why the B2B marketing method exists. Email marketing is one of the most effective modes of promotion both for individual and business customers. While there are a lot of marketing approaches, email marketing tends to be one of the most effective techniques for B2B marketing, as 93% of B2B marketers use emails for promoting their products or services.
General email marketing techniques do not work for B2B email marketing for the same reason two almost identical doors still require different keys. Large majorities using email marketing as their primary mode of marketing may sound fascinating, however, it also requires businesses to bring their A-game here. Any company can send out newsletters or promotional emails, but it takes considerable effort and planning to launch an effective email marketing campaign that would provide you with results.
For this very reason, we are here to lay out a guide detailing B2B email marketing best practices. With amazing examples and effective strategies, this guide can help your business go a long way with your B2B email marketing.
Think like a buyer
The reason most businesses suffer is that they do not understand the behavior of their target audience. A customer profile matrix in hand can help you step into the mindset of each member of your target audience. This will help you better understand what kinds of emails are suitable for each role.
For example, an individual customer will likely be interested in a how-to guide for a product. However, if you send the same email to a business that deals with the purchasing and renewal of a product rather than its actual function, your email is probably going to be sent straight to the trash.
The effectiveness of your emails depends on the extent they are targeting the needs of your audience. When you think like a buyer while designing your emails, you are more likely to target the actual demands of your audience. This will eventually lead you to an effective campaign, and the more effective your email marketing will be, the fewer subscribers or spam reports you will get.
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Use email segmentation
When targeting a particular business, you are actually targeting that company’s buying center – the people who determine whether or not to purchase your product. Your business might have to offer the same product but still require different emails for different companies because of the distinctive characteristics of the buying centers.
Email segmentation allows you to group your subscribers according to their behavior and characteristics. Instead of grouping the audience according to the industry or company, create email lists for each of the different customer personas. With just five or six segmented lists, you can hit everyone with content that is customized to their needs and interests.
Save time by automating
Email marketing includes some detailed tasks that would be impossibly time-consuming to do manually. Email marketing automation allows you to perform these tasks in an incredibly quicker way saving a lot of time and effort.
For example, you may set up an automation that tags contacts with any new information you receive about them, like job characteristics. With the help of a robust tagging system, you would be able to target hyper-specific audiences with just a few sorting filters.
Your automation platform’s sequencing tool will allow you to set up drip campaigns to be sent out over a certain period. That is the most common example, but there are plenty of others as well that include adding and updating contacts based on form submissions, segmenting your subscribers into different lists, and sending colleagues relevant updates about new subscribers and sales leads.
While there are plenty of email marketing platforms available that can be complicated, we recommend you to create an Email Campaign with PosterMyWall and enable yourself an easy way to handle your email marketing.
As we talk about email automation platforms, they too send out emails to other businesses to promote their services. This is an email sent by Campaign Monitor to its clients as a reminder to keep using their email template builder.
B2B email marketing best practices
Write enticing subject lines
For instance, consider your email subject lines as a Netflix trailer – if you cannot hook your audience with a short clip (or in this case, a few words), do not expect them to open and watch (or read) your thing. You should spend almost as much time on the email subject lines as you would spend on the emails themselves.
This tip does apply to all types of email marketing. According to OptinMonster, 33% of the recipients make the subject line their sole basis for interacting with an email. The busier your target audience is, the more important your subject lines will be. This makes subject lines more important in B2B email marketing. All email marketers should make sure that their subject lines are short enough to be seen in the inbox. 82% of email marketers according to Backlinko stick to 60 characters or fewer for their email subject lines.
Stick to one call-to-action per email
Including two, three, or sometimes up to 10 different call-to-actions is the most common mistake email marketers make. This can have your recipients’ heads spinning, wondering where to click first and ultimately clicking on nothing. With just one call-to-action per email, you allow your recipients to concentrate on your email content and eventually one action.
This example is from Hubspot, a business that sells its services to other businesses. The email contains only one call-to-action which makes it easier for the recipient to respond.
Use email templates
The use of templates is incredibly high when we dig into B2B email marketing case studies. Templates are another beneficial tool to keep your work-harder-not-smarter task going. Establishing a solid library of high-quality email templates takes time, but you will be surprised later when you can crank through thousands of emails in a day and still clock out on time.
The key to using email templates is to be able to identify different templates for different kinds of email campaigns. As each kind requires a different layout and template, you should have easily accessible templates for each type of email you typically send. You can use the same brand elements for all of them but make sure that each template is still visibly distinct.
Maintaining an email template library would not only simplify your process, but it will also allow you to take time off with the peace of mind that you always have a pre-made email selection ready to go. However, creating a template library itself could be a very time-consuming process, and to avoid the hustle, find an easily accessible email marketing template on PosterMyWall. Pick any template you like, edit it according to your brand, and your email is all set to go.
New to using the PosterMyWall email maker? Check out this quick video guide to set columns and sections in your email template.
Personalize as much as possible
Personalizing emails is the most effective action out of all B2B email marketing best practices. It includes the email addressed to the recipient by name, mentioning their company in the subject line, or adding any other content that helps your email look less generalized.
Microsoft, the tech company loves to send their prospects and current customers emails based on their browsing and purchasing habits. It sends a personalized email to its customers for products and services the company and its workers will enjoy. By sending personalized emails like this one, you can send recommendations to your customers that they will be interested in, boosting your conversions and sales.
It is not only limited to this, but mobile optimization also comes within personalization. Hubspot concludes that about 46% of all email opens happen on a phone, while 35% of business professionals check emails on mobile. These are significant statistics and it is necessary to make sure your email must show up correctly on a mobile device.
Wrapping it up
Quality packaging is key to a successful burrito, but the good stuff is what is inside. You could have the most perfect B2B email marketing strategy, but it still would not do much if what is inside the email is not up to snuff. Therefore, follow the B2B email marketing best practices and strategies outlined above, be persistent, and attain results in no time!
Qasim is a senior editor at PosterMyWall. Qasim is a reader and writer during and after work, and likes to explore a wide range of topics and niches. Outside of work, he likes to meditate, listen to good music and journal.
