Operational ideas and practical tips for planning an email marketing strategy for B2B. Here are the aspects to take into consideration to optimize your campaign.
Inserting email marketing in a B2C communication plan is one of the most used strategic moves, to create a preferential relationship both with potential customers and with existing customers. Often the mistake is made of thinking that in the field of Business to Business communication the dynamics are radically different, ending up setting up B2B email campaigns in a non-optimized way.
Although this channel has its own peculiarities and characteristic traits that distinguish it from B2C, it is good to keep in mind that even commercial exchanges between companies basically take place between people: understand and segment your target audience , generate credibility, customize your messages and fueling the interlocutor's engagement are some of the key points that are also valid in email marketing aimed at business.
How to manage B2B email marketing effectively? Here are some essential strategic tips to better organize your company's email campaigns.
· Use email marketing to generate authority
· Design and format: focus on readable and responsive emails
· Make the most of audience segmentation
· Aim for the right decision making unit
· Personalize emails and take advantage of dynamic fields
· Use the email for promotions and invitations to events
· Choose the ideal time and frequency of sending
· Follow the process from first impression to post submission
Use email marketing to
generate authority
For many professionals, e-mail is the preferred channel for communicating with partners and colleagues, a place for exchanging information and business interactions. Analyzing the data of the B2B sector, it is clear that the emails exchanged in the professional field have significantly higher opening rates and CTRs than B2C ones: in short, a communication vehicle that should not be underestimated.
Among the basic objectives of email marketing is the cultivation of profitable relationships with your leads and the transformation of prospects into actual customers. With this in mind, the ability to build strong authority in the eyes of potential customers is fundamental , in order to feed their trust in the brand and guide them along the customer journey towards conversion into acquired customers. How to gain credibility? Providing the audience with content of value, complete, clear and really useful for them, from which the competence and real preparation of those who have packaged them can be deduced.
The goal of email marketing, also therefore of B2B, is not limited to the simple sale of products and services, but is mainly to create a direct and personal relationship with the target . Winning email contents are for example those that illustrate the company's products, their use or the advantages of the service offered in an engaging way, or those that talk about relevant case studies that have benefited from approaching the brand . The use of reviews, testimonials and opinions is a highly persuasive tool. Make the recipients of communications understand how it could improve their professional life, and not only that, relying on the experience of the sending company, is a key focus for convincing and for the success of an email marketing campaign .
Design and format: focus
on readable and responsive emails
B2B and B2C email communications have a lot in common from this point of view. In fact , clear, well-formatted emails with a strong graphic appeal and easy to use are an essential requirement for the creation of successful email marketing campaigns.
B2B interlocutors are attracted to emails with an attractive design , functional CTAs and well-structured texts that can be scanned quickly and easily with the eyes. The secret is to create content with a great impact, which convinces in a few moments to deepen and continue reading. Persuasive objects, copy formatted in short paragraphs and with bold and easily identifiable key points help in this sense . As well as precise calls-to-action that fluidly channel towards the desired conversion.
Emails optimized for mobile reading are now a must-have: it is unthinkable not to consider how web traffic from mobile devices is now increasingly relevant. Even a work email can be read at any time and in any place and remembering it while studying the visual structure of your email is particularly important.
Make the most of audience
segmentation
Conducting well-organized B2B email marketing campaigns means being able to count on an audience segmented in an optimal way based on behaviors, tastes, socio-demographic characteristics, interests and needs. Thanks to an in-depth study of one's audience, it is possible to create within the mailing list groups of contacts united by pre-established parameters , to which messages created ad hoc based on their characteristics can be addressed: the goal is to more easily intercept the interest of a limited target audience, leverage specific needs and more easily guide those leads down the sales funnel to a fruitful lower part of the funnel.
An optimal segmentation also allows to lead a specific audience of already acquired customers towards the experimentation of new services or alternative products . Through a properly designed content strategy , it is possible to educate them and increase their interest. How to hook their curiosity? Through content that shows how the services they do not yet use could be integrated with those they have already chosen to purchase and further promote the growth of their businesses. Gaining and maintaining the trust of your customers is essential to be able to count on up sell and cross sell strategies and increase the number of repeater clients.
Aim for the right decision
making unit
Among the tips for effective B2B email marketing is to keep in mind that often decisions within a company are made not by a single figure, but by a group of individuals, who together form the so-called Decision Making. Unit (DMU) or decision-making unit . Each member of the DMU has a different relevance within the group, but enjoys the opportunity to influence the decisions of the other players.
Understanding who exactly are the people in your customers' DMU can be a really effective ace up your sleeve. In fact, it will be possible to create targeted communications, which leverage their different pressure points, whether they are concerns, points of view or professional needs . Mastering these psychological levers leads to incredibly satisfying successes in terms of clicks, engagement and conversions.
Personalize emails and
take advantage of dynamic fields
The personalization of your email messages is crucial for obtaining positive results. To be customized and endowed with a soul must first of all be the sender of the message: never send emails from impersonal senders, but always use a proper name that can make the recipient perceive a positive feeling of confidence . Mail without a reference to real, or realistic people, often ends up in spam or in the list of useless unread emails.
The same goes for the terms with which the recipient is addressed. When you focus on a direct marketing tool such as email, you generally aim to collect information on leads and profile your audience: part of the data collected can be used to customize the email messages sent.
Such as? Through the so-called dynamic fields, codes capable of automatically updating with the recipients' data . An example is the name of the recipient, a precious detail for calling your potential customers by their own name and creating a close relationship and a confidential atmosphere right from the first lines of the email . Other customizable fields are company name, professional sector, customer website URL, number of employees and other similar details.
Use the email for
promotions and invitations to events
The possible contents that can be included in an email communication are almost infinite. Among these there are certainly promotions and special events. Often those who subscribe to a mailing list do so to have access to a preferential channel that helps them stay up to date on the news in their sector, including special offers or special discounts, updates and news to try out in advance.
Creating exclusivity around shared content is useful for making subscribers to your mailing list feel special : exclusivity that can also translate into timed offers to take advantage of first or actions to be taken within a certain time limit, which fully exploiting the principle of 'urgency statistically lead to higher conversions.
It is also possible to use email marketing to inform your customers or prospects of the next participation in events or trade fairs , proposing an in-person meeting and creating a precious opportunity to get to know the contact, trigger productive negotiations, or finalize sales processes.
Choose the ideal time and
frequency of sending
One of the most delicate points of creating profitable email marketing campaigns is choosing the correct sending frequency. It is indeed important to find a balance point and create a constant flow of emails, but carefully timed . The best time to send a communication is also complex to establish and requires a careful analysis of the target audience and their working habits.
It may be worthwhile to send emails during business hours if you are sure your target niche can focus on it while in front of the PC, but it may be better to send emails before or after hours instead office to those key figures who are daily too busy to devote sufficient time and energy to incoming email. Analyzing data and experimenting with alternative solutions is the only way to achieve perfect timing and frequency .
Follow the process from
first impression to post submission
No moment in the email campaign should be overlooked. Starting from the welcome email, which is generally sent automatically by the email marketing automation software you use. Even in marketing, the first impression is what matters and that first message should be maniacally treated to make sure that the first contact is positive.
A welcoming email thanking you for signing up in an open and cordial tone is of great value. If the user has signed up to the contact list with the promise of receiving free content, such as an ebook, the email should obviously deliver what it promised. Otherwise it is still of great impact to offer something in exchange for the transfer of your data, as a thank you: a tutorial, a freebie, an interesting report on the sector to which you belong.
Focusing on the launch of the email marketing campaign and on its operational management, you can easily lose sight of an equally fundamental phase: the post-sending . Instead, it is crucial to define, before sending any email communication, how the company team will have to take care of the prospects and customers who will respond positively to the communication strategy created.
First of all it is good to include in the body in the email clear and correct contacts to which the potential customer can contact the company if interested in receiving information or assistance: emails, fixed and mobile telephone numbers, Skype or Messenger contacts are welcome and provide the different user modes of interaction. A team of people informed of the campaign and its purposes and above all carefully trained on customer management is then decisive and able to determine the success or failure of an email marketing plan and SEO services in New York.
As already observed, in fact, even in the B2B universe, it is people who count and it is only by orienting the focus towards individuals and their concrete needs that we can aim for appreciable results.
