How to Write the Best B2B Email Marketing Campaigns

Regardless of the latest technology innovations, email marketing still remains one of the best and most effective forms of marketing. Business-to-business marketing (B2B) is more focused on logical and process-driven decisions, while business-to-consumer (B2C) is more geared towards emotions and purchase decisions. Here we will discuss the best ways to improve your B2B email marketing campaigns.

The Economist Group and Peppercomm surveyed around 500 business executives and 500 marketing experts with the goal to outline key differences in their content expectations and understanding of content strategy.

What their research found is as follows:

• 75% of business executives are more likely to respond to an email that proposes a business idea than a message that promotes a product or service.
• 71% of business owners do not like to receive direct sales pitches and would prefer an informative email rather than a sales one.
• 61% of business executives value unique content that provides something they may not have thought of before about their vertical or workflow.
• 85% of business executives are more comfortable and accustomed to well-structured text rather than video or audio content.

Keeping these statistics in mind, we are going to give you important information to help you write the best B2B email marketing campaign. It’s key to keep in mind that when you are structuring your B2B email marketing strategy, it is much different than your B2C. Low visibility or low open rate are common results of confusing the B2B and B2C approaches. Let’s get started on how to write the best B2B email marketing campaigns.

What is a B2B email?

As we mentioned above, a business-to-business email or B2B is one that focuses more on logic and data-driven decisions. Here is a helpful infographic that you can use to determine which qualities you should include in your B2B versus B2C emails.

Your first step to a successful B2B email marketing campaign is to be benefit-driven in your emails

B2B emails are benefit-driven meaning they are meant to communicate the main value of your service or product to the recipient as quickly as possible. In short, you need to get to the point. If your B2B services offer more than one product or solution it would also be a good idea to include multiple value propositions that are structured to the needs of your prospect’s industry.

Secondly, be professional

Your messages should be respectful and concise. You are not reaching out to robots, keep in mind you are talking to a real person. Make the most out of every word and sentence. Have a polite tone of voice and throw in some professional wit to reduce the possibility of sounding like a drone. A rule of thumb is for your B2B marketing email to be like a professional handshake: firm, genuine, and don’t hold on for too long.

What’s the objective of your B2B email marketing?

Your prospect’s attention will revolve around data, results, and employee management. They have deadlines to meet, budgets to observe, and are constantly adapting and innovating their strategies. Don’t try to impress your recipients with fancy words or flashy templates, use facts over sentiments and introduce the value of your service as quickly as possible. Get to the “why”, why they should use your service, and what benefit is to them.

Understanding your audience is key for B2B email marketing

When things come to business, recipients don’t want to be amazed, surprised, or intimidated. There is a balance between data-driven information and an overwhelming amount of information. They want to be understood and reassured and you want to demonstrate you know what you’re talking about.

Know your industry’s pain points

In B2B email marketing, everything is measured in experience or expertise. Recipients don’t want to work with someone who tells a story that makes them cry in an email. Their ideal provider knows the specifics of their verticals, can swiftly identify pain points of the industry, and offer a solution in a quick and concise email. It doesn’t take many sentences to convey competence.

When sending emails from business to business, use professional language

Your B2B emails are intended for a certain title, don’t be afraid to get specific. This displays your level of professionalism as well as your competency in their field. Describe your product or service with informative technical language, and avoid colorful or excentric expressions. Case studies are also a great way to drive your point home. Recipients want to be confident in their choices, the best way to promote confidence is by proving yourself with professionalism, facts, and numbers.

Keep in mind that B2B email marketing has a longer buyer cycle

In B2B decision making, it involves more steps, more titles, stakeholders, and workflows it has to go through before being implemented. Instead of three steps, there is a set of strategic campaigns that are structured to drip important content into your recipient’s inboxes for a few weeks before the deal enters the ‘closing stage’.

It is crucial to maintain a strict schedule of follow-ups, reminding your B2B customers about your offers and what benefit they can be to them. Nurture those who respond positively until they are ready for a deal.

What is an effective B2B email campaign?

An effective campaign is one that gets results. In order to do so, here are critical steps to take before you even begin drafting your sequences.

• Create a customer persona. For any successful marketing initiative to work, the customer should be at the center of everything you do. A customer persona is a semi-fictional customer that describes who you want to target and who would benefit the most from your product. It is created by estimating and researching your user behavior and through web analytics. This means defining a person down to the T. This will give you key insights into the thought process of your contacts. Even more importantly, you will be able to discover their pain points and where they are in their buyer’s journey. Your customer persona for example:

How to write a B2B sales email template

We’ve covered the essentials of what defines a good B2B email, now let’s write one.

Your B2B emails should leave no room for doubt and that open doors of opportunity are built from 4 essential elements:

1. Subject line
2. Pitch delivery
3. Closing lines
4. Signature

Each element plays a crucial role in generating interest in your audience, so to write a persuasive email you should know them like the back of your hand. Your brand’s philosophy should start in the subject line and go all the way through to the signature.

Crafting your B2B email marketing subject line

Subject lines have the potential to control your entire email marketing campaign. Here are a few do’s and don’ts that make a great subject line:

DON'T:

• Capitalize each letter of your subject line. At this point, subject lines should have a more personal feel to them and when you capitalize each letter it looks computer-generated. Additionally, they can be very overwhelming to the eye.
• Use exclamation points! Do not include exclamation points in your subject lines. This not only makes your subject line seem salesly but it also is a trigger for spam traps. Your email won’t even end up in the desired inbox if you are using exclamation points.

DO:

• It may go against every fiber of your being, but a typo could help you in the long run. When a subject line includes a typo, it makes it stand out among the rest while giving it a more human feel. If a computer were to generate a subject line, it definitely would not have a typo.
• Ask the wrong questions. Statistically, people will respond to incorrect information on the internet before anything else. When you ask the wrong question, you will most definitely catch the eye of your recipient.

Taking advantage of these “do’s” and avoiding the “don’ts”, your subject lines will be sure to improve your email open rates. Lastly, always remember:

• Keep it short. People will most likely check their email on their phones, so make sure the subject line is short enough to appear on a screen.
• Do your research. Know your audience and provide a piece of information that makes them realize you know who you are emailing.
• Find a balance. Your emails are not blog posts, keep them concise and to the point, especially when you are writing a B2B email marketing campaign. You can always attach a case study or blog post to the email, however, present the recipient with facts and data to keep them interested.

Your Pitch Delivery

Your opening line. Once you’ve nailed the subject line and had your recipient open the email, you need to keep their interest. Your opening line must engage the recipient and keep the reader engaged all the way to the end of the email. Keep your opening brief and give a taste of what’s to come in the rest of the email. Typically, an opening line is 1 to 2 sentences long.

• Be credible, include facts and data that corroborate what you’re talking about. You should establish yourself as a professional right from the start. Demonstrate honesty, knowledge, and a tinge of creativity.
• Always remember that you are not crafting a copy-paste email and there is no one size fits all when it comes to email marketing. As your range of B2B customers expands, so does your email marketing.
• Express your knowledge of the industry, meaning, demonstrate that you know the pain points of the industry and your solutions. Bullet point lists are a great way to exhibit your knowledge and proficiency.

Closing Lines

If you have made it to this part of your recipient’s eyes, then you are well on your way to a very successful email marketing campaign. We’ve gone over how to spark interest and provide benefits of your product or service, but now to seal the deal. Your B2B email will end with a call to action (CTA), this is where you instruct your recipients to take action or take the next step.

The recipe of a successful B2B email marketing campaign: your emails get opened + receive a response + your CTA works correctly.

However, for some odd reason, your campaigns are not performing well, we may have the answer. Go over and double-check that there is no ambiguity or lack of clarity in your email. Everything should be easily read and understood. Make sure that there is not too much pressure on your recipients. This means, not too many CTAs or making it a ‘do or die’ scenario for recipients.

To make things simple, you want to make it as easy as possible for your recipients. Don’t give them any unnecessary steps.

Personalize everything, everyone likes to be treated as an individual. Each CTA should include a personalized detail to make it feel that it was specialized just for that recipient.

Lastly, provide options in your closing lines. This is part of the ‘make things as easy as possible’ rule. Sometimes it’s best to let your recipient choose what they want from provided options rather than asking them to make suggestions. By providing extra options you are relieving them of any extra work.

Your signature is everything

While something that could be seemingly insignificant, your email signature also holds a lot of power. In your signature, you can demonstrate how you work or make it more personal by sharing about yourself and showing your expertise.

Showing how you work is a great way to demonstrate your experience and knowledge of the subject that you’re talking about. You can attach a case study that supports the data that you provided them earlier in the email or attach a blog post that proves your knowledge of the subject.

Tell them about yourself. You can attach a press release or an article published that you are mentioned in and this can help boost your credibility.

Showcase your expertise. If your company hosts webinars, attach a link to one. It will inject more value into your product or service and let your audience know how much they can benefit from you.

There you have it folks, the key ingredients to crafting a successful B2B email marketing campaign. But our secret trick of the trade and the final step before sending out your campaigns is to clean your lists.

Cleaning your B2B email marketing lists

The best way to ensure that your campaign is going to perform well is to guarantee that they make it to the right inboxes. If your company has a list of subscribers or email recipients, you want to make sure that your strategic and carefully crafted campaigns are appearing on the right screens.

The best and most efficient solution is to clean your email lists, which means going through each email and making sure that they are grammatically correct, spelled correctly, checked for syntax, or if there are any duplicates (just to name a few things to keep in mind).

Now, you could do this yourself however it could take you days, maybe even weeks to go through each email plus you need to account for human error.

But, there is no need to stress, Emailable is able to take care of all of your list cleaning needs at an affordable price.

All of the tips mentioned above will take you in the right direction for the best B2B email marketing campaigns, but keep in mind that the most successful campaign first has to be delivered. With Emailable you will never have to worry about emails not delivering, bouncing, or falling into any spam traps.