Many companies have invested in content marketing and automation tools to respond to the urgency of moving to digital. This put some pressure on their marketing by asking them to deliver results that are measured and, by linking these results to the company’s revenues.
According to the study report “B2B Content Marketing 2020: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America,” email remains a key marketing channel for most B2B brands, with 81% used in the past 12 months.
Having resounding success with B2B marketing email happens. Having equally flamboyant failures happens too!
In B2B, you invest in educational content spread over several emails before prospects start to actually engage. Messages must also be optimized to bring value to each shareholder involved in the purchasing process.
Emails have the best ROI as a digital marketing channel, and B2B emails have a 47% higher click-through rate or CTR compared to B2C emails.
In the vast majority of cases, it is aimed at a group of rational buyers who manage issues and risks related to the purchase. We are not in the ‘WOW’ of the B2C but, in the very logical B2B!
You need to understand your prospect’s requirements and address the concerns of other players in the buying process to get your message to the actual decision maker.
So here are eight practical tips that we put forward in our own email broadcasts and also, shared by other experts on the web.
1. Optimize your messages for mobile
Campaign Monitor found that emails opened on mobile devices increased by 30% over a 5-year period. Today, more than 55% of emails are open on mobile devices. Their optimization is crucial.
One of the most critical elements of writing an object line is to stupidly give it the right length.
Many studies have been conducted on this subject, but recent data, according to Campaign Monitor, have shown that the optimal length is between 28 and 50 characters.
Test yourself and once you’ve found the right length, stick to it until you feel you need to optimize again.
2. Personalize your B2B marketing emails
Effective customization helps you improve your click rates. In short, creating the right type of personalized email can have a very positive impact.
Today, we have the opportunity to access a lot of relevant data that can help us improve our customization tactics and go beyond first name and family name.
If you leverage survey data, purchase cycle analysis (recency, frequency, purchase type and amount) by applying certain business rules, you will have much higher conversion results (opens, clicks, inquiries, purchases).
There are a multitude of possibilities for B2B email customization. Use your data and be creative.
With click-through rates increasing by an average of 14% and conversions by 10% on average, the use of customization in B2B emails is a no-brainer.
3. Segment your lists
If your customization doesn’t allow you to go beyond first name and family name, then segment your lists. Segmentation is an excellent approach in B2B and, it is easy to do.
An essential tool to use for segmentation is the research directory for Quebec products and services. This directory is intended for local manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors and allows you to search for basic information such as SCIAN codes.
This directory allows us to segment by industry and sub-industry, sizes, postal code, turnover, etc. It is not perfect but, it is extremely useful in segmentation. Otherwise, this type of repertoire exists elsewhere.
4. Use between 50 and 125 words of text for a promotional email
The length of the text is an important factor in determining the CTR of marketing emails. The idea is to find the right measure to properly explain your offer, the benefits and why readers should care.
According to recent data, “the ideal length of an email is between 50 and 125 words”, Campaign Monitor explains, and this generally translates into response rates above 50%.”
5. Keep a conversational tone
A common mistake that many B2B brands make is to talk to prospects with a dry, rigid and hyper-formalistic tone in their email.
So, a good approach is to adopt a conversational tone where you create a dialogue with a reader. Do A/B tests.
6. Make sure each email answers three key questions
Here are three specific questions that need to be answered in order for a B2B marketing email to reach its target.
What do you offer?
How will this help the reader?
What should they do next?
This way, you capture the reader’s attention and thanks to the call to action that you have carefully chosen, it will be converted to the next step that will take it to a landing page.
7. Send between one and five marketing emails per month
Another good trick is to ensure a frequency that is neither too high nor too low to fall into oblivion. Again, it’s about finding the right balance and testing.
An in-depth search of CoSchedule, however, revealed a frequency that seems to work in almost every area, ranging from one to five marketing emails per month.
8. Address and re-engage inactive subscribers
Studies show that, on average, 63% of subscribers to your contact list are not active. In order to get back in touch with them, you must take the necessary steps such as analyzing these contacts, putting forward a sound management of them, etc.
Capitalize on your existing subscribers for commitment to your brand and finally, we hope, on sales.
Ask them! Interact in one-on-one sampling to understand why they are inactive but remain subscribed to your mailing list? A good analysis of your data is necessary, and a fair understanding of the situation allows for changes.
Final words
There are still elements that can optimize your emails but since my blog post has reached 1,002 words, I’ll stop here! Hoping that this post will be useful to you.
I invite you to contact us if you have any questions.
Cheers!
