9 B2B email marketing tips to build your business

Business-to-business (B2B) email marketing has come of age, offering even small businesses an effective option to level up their customer acquisition efforts.

How much? CloudTask reports that the estimated return on investment for B2B email marketing is $44.25 for every $1 spent. Another survey found that 91 percent of B2B marketers rated email marketing above every other channel they used. 

The logic behind these enviable statistics is worth understanding. A strategically written, well-designed email offers recipients something of value – information, insight, or resolution on a routine business need or problem. The more engaged the reader becomes in your messaging, the more likely they are to convert from ‘email recipient’ to ‘customer.’ 
Ready to get started? Here are nine B2B email marketing tips that can optimize your first campaign. 

Related: Word-of-mouth marketing: How it can work for you

1. Know your target audience

A successful B2B email marketing campaign zeroes in on a specific audience: the businesses whose own commercial success relies at least partially on another business’s products or services. Those could be your products or services – or your competitors’. 

This is where research pays off. The more specifically you can define the businesses that are in your target market, the more effectively you will be able to tailor your marketing efforts. 

For example, if your business sells office equipment and supplies, your most successful email leads might be individuals whose job titles include ‘business operations,’ or ‘business agent” – employees who do the bulk purchasing. To take it a step further, you might split this list into different customer profiles: “educational institutions,” “financial institutions,” “hotel/restaurant,” etc. Each of these groups has different buying habits, budgets, and even buying seasons. 

2. Use your business website to build your email list

One easy way to collect good email leads for your first marketing campaign is to solicit them from your current customers at the point of sale.  After all, these are contacts who have already bought your product or service. Your email marketing to this group can build on that loyalty. 

But this won’t expand your customer base or bring in new email leads. Those are tasks best accomplished by installing a two-step opt-in form on the landing page of your company website. 

The two-step opt-in form is a tool that uses the psychology of commitment to ease visitors into sharing their contact information. Simply put, most people have a tendency to complete a transaction that they’ve already begun. So, if your website visitors sign off on an initial query or offer, most will opt in to a second request (for their name and email address) to complete the transaction. The success of the first ‘ask’ actually makes them more comfortable about the second ‘ask.’

In practice, a two-step opt-in form might look like this:

• A pop-up window greets visitors to your company website with a question that piques their interest. It could be an offer for a marketing listicle or a white paper that discusses a relevant industry topic. “Do you want to know the top 10 reasons consumers are buying cars in 2022?”
• This is the first opt-in. Invite your website visitors to press an opt-in button that praises their decision: “Count me in!” “I want to learn more” or “Yes, I’m interested.” 
• Give them the opportunity to opt out with a simple “No, thank you.”
• Then comes the second opt-in. All of the people in the “yes” category will be immediately linked to a second page, where they will be instructed to give their name and email address so they can receive whatever was promised. 
• The landing page for this second opt-in might include additional delineators, such as “What is your job title?” or “Are you inquiring on behalf of your employer?  Again, this will give you a better idea about whether your new contact has customer potential.
• If you think some of your website visitors were too quick to opt out on your initial ask, consider installing a chatbot that gives them a second chance to opt in.

The two-step opt-in method has been so successful that most email marketers have abandoned the direct ask (single-step opt-in) altogether. That said, if you are planning to install a user form on your website, consider using a professionally developed template to capture accurate and usable data. 

3. Segment your email list

The better you ‘know’ the individuals and businesses on your list – their demographics, geography, annual revenue, browsing activity, buying habits, education level – the more you should be segmenting your list to reflect those differences. This will allow you to tailor your messaging to speak directly to each segment -- an ongoing goal for any B2B marketer. You can start with something simple: a list of every email collected from a website give-away (described above). Then create another list from individuals who purchased your product (in store or online). Now you have two segments. Don’t stop there.

Eventually, you may want to invest in a customer relationship management (CRM) tool to capture and segment new information. It’s an investment, but it’s worth it.  Campaignmonitor.com reports that email marketers who conducted segmented campaigns reported a 760 percent increase in their revenues.

4. Send emails that potential customers want to open

Your B2B messaging starts with your subject line. If it’s intriguing enough for recipients click “open”, it has achieved its goal. That can be as simple as including the recipient’s first name in the subject line – a move that bumped up open rates by 26 percent, according to Experian.com. 

You can also ask an eye-catching question in your subject line – one that speaks to your recipients’ curiosity about the competition and their ambition to succeed. For instance, if you’re a marketing agency targeting new retail store clients, subject lines like “Is your business ready for the 2021 holiday rush?” or “Do you know the 10 things that holiday shoppers are looking for?” will be hard for your potential clients to ignore. 

That said, don’t let your enthusiasm go overboard. Spam filters will pick up on subject lines that are littered with outrageous claims, ALL CAP headlines, funky fonts, and unnecessary exclamation points. Terms like ‘free,’ ‘make money,’ and ‘lowest price’  will almost certainly send your message to the spam folder. 

5. Personalize your message

This is where list segmentation pays off. The messaging that goes out to each segment of your email list should speak directly to their unique self-interests. Use whatever you know about each list to make their messaging more relevant. Experian Marketing reports that personalized emails are six times more likely to generate a transaction. 

So, if your company sells institutional cleaning supplies, generate messaging that addresses different customer profiles. Grade schools might get “10 Tips for Making Back-to-School Safer” while the hospitals and clinics might get “10 Ways to Quickly Disinfect Common Areas.”  These two emails might have similar content, but their headlines speak directly to their individual audiences. 

It’s worth noting that the tone of these emails differs from anything you might send out to individual consumers (B2C marketing). Your B2B audience is shopping to increase the success of their businesses. Your approach should be straight-forward, information-rich, and practical. They do not want to wade through a splashy pitch.

6. Get your audience involved with a call to action (CTA)

The call to action (CTA) is a word, phrase, or sentence, positioned prominently in your email, that invites your readers to become more engaged in your messaging. It might be an opt-in for a video demonstration or a free listicle with helpful project tips. Each successful CTA brings readers closer to pressing the “buy now” button – the ultimate CTA. 

Depending on the cost or complexity of the purchase, it might take a few marketing emails - each with its own CTA - before recipients make the decision to purchase. Here are a few CTAs that can help you get them there: 

• Participation in an opinion poll 
• Statistics that explain a common business concern
• A discount coupon for your service/product
• Invitation to ‘find out more’ about your product 
• Link to a chatbot that can answer questions 
• Product newsletter sign-up
• A white paper, article, or tweet that has pertinent information
• Link to a video demonstration of product
• Link to customer endorsements
• Click to buy your product or service

Not sure if your CTA is working its magic? Check out InstapagIe’s evaluation tool.

7. Launch email campaigns to transform your audience’s thinking

A well-sequenced B2B marketing campaign can easily transform email prospects into customers. But that conversion will usually take more than one email. And those emails should be spread out over time: one report found that, on average, B2B marketing companies issue one email campaign every 25 days. That gives recipients plenty of time to contemplate the value of your offer. According to CloudTask.com you can turn that thinking into buying by hitting three benchmarks in your campaign:

The awareness stage is when your emails seek to educate your prospects on what your brand does, the problems it solves. Your goal is to gently remind your prospect that their business needs to solve those same problems. Your messaging might include links to videos, blog posts, infographics, or FAQs.

The consideration stage is when your messaging encourages prospects to consider how they might address their business problems or needs. Your goal is to position your product as a resource. Your emails will introduce them to more pointed and substantial material, such as white papers, case studies, webinars, and, ideally, your business’s own ‘insider’ newsletter. 

The decision stage is when you openly encourage your prospects to solve their problem by purchasing your product. Your messaging will focus on making that purchase, easier, cheaper, or otherwise more attractive. Your CTA will include special discounts, free trials, product demos, or attractive pricing tiers.

8. Make sure your email gets delivered

No matter how carefully you assemble your email list, be ready to catch (and corre¬¬¬¬ct) some common delivery problems. Your email software should help you segment your lists while also scanning for delivery problems and updating your lists after every campaign. Make sure you are regularly checking for:

Wrong or outdated email addresses: People change jobs – and therefore email addresses – all the time. Those using personal email addresses may close down an account or simply stop checking it.  And a fair number of emails get devoured by problems with syntax, domain name issues, and typos.  

Spam filters: It goes without saying that your emails should comply with all applicable spam laws. You could also get caught in a spam filter dungeon if your once willing recipients have had a change of heart but cannot find a way to opt-out. Make your “unsubscribe” link prominent and easy to process. Otherwise, your marketing emails could start accumulating complaints that will eventually trigger many spam filters to automatically block them. all. 

Chronically unresponsive recipients: If some of your leads have not opened, clicked, or otherwise responded to your email marketing, purge them from your lists so they don’t skew your metrics. This scrubbing of your lists will also rid you of duplicates and other errors while also decreasing the likelihood of your emails being labeled ‘spam.’

9. Review and refine your B2B strategy

As with every business investment, the performance of your email marketing efforts should be regularly reviewed. This will allow you to refine your approach, going forward. Here are a few questions that will get you started: 

• Are your 2-step opt-in forms getting clicked, declined, or overlooked?
• What percentage of B2B email recipients are opening your emails? 
• What percentage of recipients are clicking your CTA? 
• How much is it costing you to convert a prospect into a lead? 
• Do you need to add another segment?
• Are your contact lists regularly scrubbed for errors, duplicates, and other problems? 
• Are you seeing an uptick in business, beyond what you would normally expect?

Focus on what’s important

Business-to-business email marketing is a powerful tool for customer acquisition, but it can’t replace the energy, focus, and inspiration that make your business worth promoting. That’s on you. Remember to keep refining your own strategies, skills, and perspective so you are ready for the next smart risk. Hiscox can back you up. 

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