Crafting a B2B email marketing strategy that hits your goals

Lead nurturing emails. Lead nurturing campaigns are triggered by user behavior. An email is sent out to a subscriber depending on how they interact with your email. This type of email campaign is designed to walk your prospect through the buying process by giving them as much information as possible so as to assist them in making a decision.

Drip campaigns. Not to be confused with lead nurturing emails, drip emails are time-triggered as opposed to being triggered by behavior. Drip campaigns are a great way to keep your brand top of mind as the recipient will regularly be receiving your emails. These automated email campaigns are also helpful to educate your prospect on your brand without overwhelming them.

Promotional emails. Promotional emails are what you’re likely most familiar with. These serve the sole purpose of promoting a particular service or product.

Newsletters. An effective way of letting subscribers know the latest news about their favorite product (yours hopefully), newsletters are the opposite of promotional emails. Although you are able to promote your product or service, 90% of your newsletter should be informative or educational. Don’t overlook this type of B2B email as newsletters generally drive more engagement than promotional emails.

For maximum impact, you can use some of these email campaigns together in a coordinated effort.

4. Grow your list of subscribers.

Your B2B email marketing strategy will only be as profitable as the quality of your list.

Growing your list of subscribers may seem like a daunting task at first. But if you know what to do, we promise it can be quite simple. The main thing you'll need to do is create a persona of your target audience. By developing a buyer persona, you'll have insight into the kind of lead magnet to create or the offer that would most likely elicit a subscription.

In B2B marketing, buyer personas are those who make the purchasing decision for an organization. In order to create an effective buyer persona, you need to understand the pain points and pressures that come with their role in the company.

Directing your campaign toward a targeted audience is crucial to ensuring you have a highly engaged audience.

5. Segment your list—the smart way.

Segmenting your list may be hard work, but is one of the most sensitive parts of your email marketing strategy. As great as it is to have a huge list of contacts, you will have to send each subscriber emails that are timely and relevant to their needs.

This is where smart segmentation comes into play.

By segmenting your list of subscribers, you ensure that your emails hit the right spot, and unlock the right doors for you. This is because segmentation is the best email personalization tactic when it comes to B2B email marketing.

Some of the best ways to segment your email list are by:

• Demographics. For B2B email marketing, this can be the position held or industry.

• Location. Apart from meeting location specific needs, segmenting your email list according to location will also help you to ensure your emails go out at the right time.

• Engagement. The way subscribers engage with your emails can indicate what they need. Those who engage more probably need more content.

• Recent purchases. Those who have purchased from you are more likely to buy again. This is a great segment opportunity for cross-selling.  

The main goal of precise segmentation is to enable you to address your prospect’s pain points as effectively as possible. This will drive more engagement and afford you greater success with your B2B email marketing campaign.

6. Create effective content.

Your email marketing strategy is a vehicle for the message you want to pass on to your prospects. No matter how robust your strategy may be, if the message is weak, your campaign will be weak. That’s why you need to ensure you get the message right.

This is where B2B email marketing and B2C email marketing differ most. With B2C email marketing, you typically address a single person. This gives you the advantage of using emotional nuances in your copy so as to increase conversions. B2B email marketing is different in this aspect as you will have to factor in other decision makers as you craft the content of your emails.

This means that the type of content you produce for your B2B email marketing campaigns has to stand out. Some of the most important elements that make high-converting B2B email copy are:

• Informative. B2B email copy must appeal to logic as opposed to B2C copy that mainly appeals to the emotions. This means it should include a lot of data, benchmarks, and proof that your product or service can deliver results.

• Engaging. Despite the fact that your email copy has to be loaded with facts and figures, you still need to keep it interesting and engaging. After all, you’re still writing for human beings. One way to help bring life to all the data and facts in your B2B email is by mixing them into your brand story.

The bottom line when it comes to creating copy for your B2B email is that it has to provide value, must be targeted, and has to be timely.

7. Use a reliable email marketing platform.

When it comes time to implement your well-designed and thought-out B2B email marketing strategy, you will need a good email marketing platform to do so. Especially considering that B2B email marketing campaigns often feature more advanced segmentation, you’ll have to invest in a platform that can effortlessly grant you the flexibility you need when it comes to segmentation.

Besides segmentation, a reliable email marketing platform will also allow you to look professional. This is because it gives your subscribers a seamless experience on their customer journey, thereby portraying you as a professional worth partnering with.

Wrap up

The digital age has made it easy to do business with clients from all over the world. This, among other things, has made competition fierce. That’s why, if you are to succeed, you need to plan your marketing very well. You have to craft a B2B email marketing strategy that will help you hit all your goals.

Keep these steps in mind to hit your goals:

• Know your KPIs

• Send the right type of email

• Grow and segment your list

• Create effective content

• Always use a stable email platform

For further reading on how you can master the art and science of email marketing, feel free to check out these email marketing tips.