B2B Email marketing agency – campaign strategy
Why is B2B email marketing an effective channel in your marketing strategy and how can our B2B email marketing agency help you. Here’s why:
- As much as 86% of business people prefer email over other channels when it comes to business communication.
- Email is among the most influential sources of information for B2B audiences, behind only colleague recommendations and industry-specific thought leaders.
- 59% of B2B marketers see email marketing as the most effective revenue generation strategy.
- An incredible 79% of B2B marketers credit email as the most effective demand generation channel.
Knowing this, how do you put an effective B2B email marketing campaign in place?
Have the right strategy in place for B2B email marketing
Frequency in your B2B email marketing campaigns is crucial. Don’t overwhelm your subscribers by emailing too often. That will send them straight to the spam button. Instead, inform them from the outset how often they can expect to hear from you. Then stick to this schedule and ensure you tie your marketing campaign deadlines into this schedule for an all-round effective strategy.
If you’re using B2B email marketing as part of an informative/nurturing strategy such as a client newsletter. You’ll want to set the frequency from the outset. By determining how much relevant and engaging content you plan to produce will determine the frequency of your newsletter. You’ll want consistency in both the nature of the content and the frequency to give your subscribers familiarity. This also helps to build the brand reputation and trust between the business and the client.
Don’t be afraid to ask for subscriber input on email scheduling via a poll or survey. You can also offer an “opt down” option for those who love your emails but don’t want to get them as often.
Once you’ve outlined your email plan, it’s time to start writing.
Use a strong subject title
When considering your B2B marketing campaign strategy and the content required, you will have already determined your target audience and key messaging.
As with any newspaper article, or magazine headline, your subject title of your email campaign is what will make your audience click ‘open’. Businesspeople are time precious so they need to know what’s in it for them. Why will they spare 5 minutes of their working day to read this email?
You don’t have a lot of words to make an impression, either; Campaign Monitor’s data shows that most subject lines range from 41 to 50 characters. Even less of your subject line shows on mobile screens, so it’s wise to put the most important parts at the start.
Here’s some ideas to consider for generating an effective subject line.
- Telling people what they’ll get when they open your emails; no need to be clever or witty unless that’s your brand’s personality.
- Adding personalisation, as including people’s name in the subject line can keep them more engaged.
- Avoiding spam trigger words so your emails make it to the inbox.
It’s all about the content
With the subject line in place, now it’s time for the main marketing copy. You’ll want to create a hook right at the start that will get people to want to read on. For best results, keep email marketing copy short, and avoid pitching your offer too early. You want people to get comfortable first.
If possible, address your subscribers by name (you’ll need really good data for this to be effective). Personalised emails are always more successful.
Here’s some content ideas to consider for your copy:
- A personal story. Being human never hurts a company and often helps people make an emotional connection. Some of the most successful emails we’ve seen use this technique.
- Something of value to your readers. That can be a piece of content, some useful information or the resource you’re promoting. Make it clear how this will help them. The example below from SEMrush underlines the potential benefit in the first line of the email.
- A poll, survey, GIF or video, all of which are proven to keep readers more engaged.
As we said before, you’ll want to keep your email short and concise, so don’t feel you need to include all of the above options. If your email does start to become lengthy, make it scannable with top line headers, standout imagery and then link people back to the original source to read more if they’re interested. This is also a great way of leading people back to your website.
Have an effective call to action
The last part of your email marketing copy is the call to action (CTA). Your CTA reflects the one thing you most want people to do when they’ve read your email.
CTAs usually appear multiple times within your email marketing copy. While you don’t want to pitch to readers too soon, there’ll likely be a CTA near the start, in the middle and near the end.
The best calls to action are short and clear. If you’ve got your copy right, then it should be a no-brainer for subscribers to click your link.
Make your email visual
How your email looks will help determine the successful of your email campaign. If your emails look terrible, that reflects badly on you, and can make people stop reading. With more people than ever reading emails on mobile devices, it’s important to use a responsive email template so your email resizes automatically whether people are reading it on a phone, tablet, or desktop.
The length of your content will determine the style and design of your email. If you have a lot of messages you want to include, make sure you have stand out images and top line messaging and then you can link them back to the website for more information if they’re interested.
Most good emails have more text than images. There’s no denying that images make your email more attractive, but know that many people disable images. That means your email still has to work even if people can’t see them.
Don’t forget to test
Finally, sending your email is just the first step in achieving email marketing success. For really effective campaigns, you’ll need to collect data to improve future campaigns.
That means testing everything: design and layout, email marketing copy, subject lines and calls to action. Consider testing emails with different segments and experimenting with email send times.
You’ll also want to monitor email analytics from your service provider relating to opens, clicks, unsubscribes and forwards. This will enable you to figure out what’s working and what’s not with email marketing.
Don’t have time to manage your B2B email marketing campaigns?
We manage everything from writing, designing, data management and distribution to report analysis. Get in touch and we can discuss your requirements today…