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The landscape of business-to-business (B2B) buying has changed. Today, 75% of buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience with digital tools and online decision-making.
Yet, trust and relationship-building are as important as ever. According to a recent Exclaimer report, 63% of surveyed B2B buyers want a one-to-one marketing experience.
When asked about their top channels for receiving that personalized attention, one in three mentioned email. Compare that to 7% who prefer direct mail and 4% who want phone calls.
Email offers the same person-to-person connection as a phone call but with less pressure and more time to think. It lets sales targets process value-rich messages and understand the sender's expertise and potential solutions.
Purposeful B2B email marketing strategies are vital to maximizing those benefits. Let's look at building that strategy, starting with the results you want to target.
Why Is Email Marketing Important for B2B Companies' Lead Gen?
Lead generation, or lead gen, turns disconnected awareness into an active intent to buy. While most B2B marketing channels target only one side of that divide, email bridges the gap with value-packed messaging.
B2B marketing emails reach prospects starting at the minimal to light engagement stage when the prospect needs more information but isn't yet decision-ready. Email provides that necessary information in a digestible format, letting the prospect decide when to follow up.
Those follow-up choices provide essential information to sales teams. Potential leads show sales teams what they need by signing up for webinars, requesting demos, or accepting other in-email offers.
10 Powerful B2B Email Marketing Strategies for Lead Gen
Email is a form of B2B content marketing. The usefulness and relevance of your message can make or break your success, which you'll measure based on readers' willingness to engage. Each strategy relates to those three key points — value, relevance, and engagement.
1. Know Your Target Audience and Refine Your Segments
Email is one-on-one communication with the efficiency of mass messaging. That's the true power of email marketing for B2B, and personalization makes it more effective.
Every customer base has multiple segments, each with its own needs. The more you know about each subset, the more effectively you can personalize email content.
B2B buyer personas help you conceptualize those customer groups. A persona represents a potential customer, often described as a hypothetical individual with a name, job, and pain points.
Companies create personas based on market research and customer data. Marketers can refine their approach and relate to audience needs by integrating that information into a relatable persona.
2. Optimize Your Opt-In Forms and Landing Pages
B2B decision-makers invest more heavily in brands they trust. From day one, the best way to build that trust is to encourage contact rather than discourage it.
In B2B email marketing strategies, that means building an opt-in email list. Opt-in email lists only send messages to recipients who have explicitly consented, improving deliverability rates and encouraging brand trust.
Prospects sign up for email lists when they're confident they'll get something worthwhile. To increase signups, focus your opt-in forms and landing pages on the value of your email content. Show potential subscribers what they can only get by signing up, then make sure you deliver.
Privacy and efficiency also matter. Ask for only the information you need immediately, even if that's just a name and email address. You can always collect more information once you've established a relationship.
3. Leverage the Power of Automation
Automation is one of the most valuable developments in digital marketing. It lets you create and market to multiple specialized segments without manually sorting new contacts.
Automation-powered email tools can sort new and existing signups based on their interests and demographics. With everyone automatically sorted, you can design targeted email campaigns for each segment and incorporate recipients' names, companies, and roles.
With some strategy and greater automation power, you can turn those personalized emails into an effective email marketing funnel. A funnel is a series of targeted emails sent to a specific segment to guide them from awareness to purchase.
You can even schedule each email in the cadence to send automatically. This tactic means you can spend less time on manual tasks and more time meeting customers' needs.
4. Make Sure Your Emails Are Mobile-Friendly
Today's decision-makers are always on the go, meaning they check emails on their phones. A recent poll showed that 84% of professionals check work and personal emails on mobile devices.
Your messages need to look good on those devices. The first step is using a mobile responsive email template. Ask your email service provider if you need to know whether yours fits the bill.
Next, look at how you design your emails. A mobile responsive email should check all these boxes:
- Concise subject lines
- Short paragraphs
- Headers and subheaders
- Lots of white space
- Easy-to-spot links and calls to action
You'll get more from your email marketing efforts if your email is readable and engaging on all devices.
5. Send Your B2B Emails at the Right Time
According to recent Hubspot research, the best time to send a B2B email is between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. in your recipient's time zone. That's when more professionals check their messages and set priorities for the day.
In order of preference, the next best times for email engagement are:
- 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
- 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.
Days of the week matter, too. Marketers say Tuesday emails get the most engagement, followed by those received on Mondays and Thursdays.
6. Share Valuable Content in an Email Newsletter
The most relevant content for B2B decision-makers is detailed and information-rich. A B2B newsletter is the best way to share that style of content.
B2B newsletter marketing allows businesses to explore promotional and non-promotional topics deeply. A balance is best, as the purpose of email newsletters is to match the recipient's problems with your solutions.
A newsletter's content-rich format lets you explore concepts that align with your expertise. You can explain those concepts and your insights in a user-first format that puts you in the role of a helpful advisor. That perception will help you immensely when the time comes to convert.
Plus, like any other type of email, newsletters are customizable to each target segment's needs. They can be ultra-personal if you have enough data and track how readers respond.
Never written a newsletter before? No problem. Browse these newsletter examples for ideas and inspiration, then build your own with this email newsletter checklist.
7. Launch a Re-Engagement Email Campaign
Subscribers who stop responding can harm your email deliverability. But before you write off recipients who last engaged a while ago, try sending follow-up emails to re-engage them.
Even the most engaging emails can become noise if someone forgets why they subscribed. To get your subscribers back on board, remind them of the value you offer and encourage them to reach out. That might involve highlighting a new product, sharing a big success story, or reminding them of a special promotion.
8. Map Out Your Lead Nurturing Process
Every B2B buyer follows a customer journey. They start as potential leads, meaning they've encountered your business and have shown some low-level interest. In this case, they've signed up for your emails.
Lead nurturing gets them from this place to say, "Yes, I'll buy."
The first stage of lead nurturing is turning potential leads into qualified leads. A qualified lead has engaged on a deeper level and is ready — or almost ready — for a sales conversation.
That process looks different for every audience. Some B2B businesses have a longer qualification process. Leads need to become "information-qualified" before engaging with more bottom-of-the-funnel content. Then, they're ready for a sales talk. Others qualify faster.
Determining how you nurture leads is part of developing your B2B email marketing strategy. This will guide who receives which type of messaging and when.
9. Use A/B Testing To Perfect Your Strategy
A B2B email marketing strategy is a living thing. It's important to continuously check its effectiveness and tweak your plan.
One of the simplest and most effective strategies is A/B testing. An A/B test sends out two versions of an email or newsletter, with very slight variations between the two. Each set of results points you toward a better strategy.
10. Monitor Key Metrics To Optimize Your Efforts
In a recent study by the Content Marketing Institute, email ranked among the five most effective B2B marketing channels based on measurable results. Sourcing those results — and paying attention to them — is the key to email return on investment.
The best performance metrics center on subscriber action. If someone has engaged with your content, they're more likely to move through the funnel.
The most valuable key performance indicators (KPIs) for email engagement include:
- Open rate: How many of your campaign recipients open the email
- Click-through rate: The percentage of recipients who click on at least one link in an email
- Conversion rate: The share of recipients who complete a target action, such as requesting more information or signing up for a demo
- Email forwarding rate: The ratio of readers who forward your email to someone else, often by clicking a "share this" or "forward this email" link
- Direct return on investment: The amount of revenue coming directly from an email campaign
KPI tracking is one of the most significant advantages of having a newsletter.
Simplify Your B2B Email Marketing With Our Newsletter Checklist
Now that you've explored the most critical B2B email best practices, you're ready to create a campaign. Consider starting with a newsletter, which you'll edit for each buyer segment within your list.
Don't be intimidated — Compose.ly is here to help. Browse our list of free email newsletter templates, which you can grab from the web and edit on your chosen platform. Fill them with value-rich content, then check them against our email newsletter checklist.
Your first newsletter is just a step on the path to a complete strategy. Bookmark this guide as a reference as you build the right plan for your organization. Don't forget to follow the data!
