Email marketing is the most effective form of marketing available to B2B companies. The problem is so many companies think that this is confined to sending out a few emails when you release a new product and hoping for the best. It’s not enough to get the most from your B2B sales team. Unlocking the potential of B2B email marketing is about ensuring that you are building a strong relationship with your target audience.
So how do you go about unlocking the true potential of email marketing and opening up this next frontier for your company?
How are You Attracting Subscribers?
The channels you use to attract subscribers to your blog do matter when it comes to what you are sending to your customers. Contrary to what a lot of people think, if you just compile all the emails into one list you are going to be sending untargeted communications.
Someone who signs up after using your product is going to want something different to someone who has signed up via a social media link or came to you because of the initiative that your Instagram growth service put in.
You should have separate groups for every different channel. This will help you to better target your communications. It will mean more work your part, but this is going to ensure that you are winning at B2B negotiations. You are giving your prospects the emails they want at that moment.
Get On Them Fast
One of the biggest mistakes in the B2B world is to target your oldest subscribers first to make that initial contact. A study showed that the most likely subscribers to click through are those who subscribed most recently, and preferably within the last 24 hours.
You should have an email sequence setup so you are sending a communication within a few hours of them first subscribing. This is where an email automation sequence comes in handy. The vast majority of reputable newsletter platforms have them.
Set up a sequence for each group of subscribers you have and the funnel will run without your input.
What are You Aiming to Do?
To unlock the true potential of your email marketing campaign you have to have a firm purpose in mind. What a B2B customer wants is entirely different to what a B2C customer wants. For a start, a B2B customer is a business and therefore the challenges they face are different.
Whenever you craft an email to send to your subscribers, ask what their main problems are and what you can do about them.
This is where segmenting your list comes in handy because you know where they came from and what problems they are likely to have. It ensures that your content is always relevant and you are fulfilling the needs of your B2B customer at all times. These are the best practices of B2B email marketing.
You also have to bear in mind the type of solution that a customer is likely to be searching for. There are multiple problems, such as:
- The need to be educated. Business owners are unaware of their options.
- More information on the product. They are interested and just need that one last sales pitch.
- Support with making a decision. In this case, you are supporting them in comparing various products.
As you can see, these are three entirely different branches. If you sent the same content to every subscriber, you wouldn’t fulfill their needs, and therefore your email marketing campaign would be less effective.
Invite Dialogue
You never can tell whether your efforts are wasted until you speak to them. It’s impossible to know if you have a customer who is bad for business until you start a dialogue. Email marketing is not about setting up your automation sequence and letting it do the work for you.
From time to time, you should get in touch with customers directly and speak to them. Not only does this create a dialogue but it will help you to better understand how likely this business is to actually make a purchase. Then you can redirect your time and resources towards your most likely prospects.
Conclusion
Making the most of email marketing is about being more specific with the communications you send out. It’s about meeting the expectations and needs of each individual. This will enhance the strength of every email you send and improve your email marketing ROI.
How are you going to make sure that your email campaigns get better today?
Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.