B2B Email Marketing – it’s often a blessing and a curse for many business to business organizations. On one hand, email technology has made it efficient and easy to test and measure email marketing initiatives. On the other hand, the ease of email reporting will quickly reveal lackluster results and ineffective strategies.
B2B marketers are on the hook to employ email campaigns that produce ongoing, tangible results as part of a sales-centric marketing strategy. More than half of these marketers say that boosting sales revenue and increasing leads generated are key priorities for their B2B email marketing strategy.1 At the same time, a majority of email marketing professionals — 53% — struggle with low click through rates. 1
EYE-OPENING B2B
EMAIL MARKETING STATS
Source: Optinmonster
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Source: SuperOffice
EMAIL CTR DEFINED
Email clickthrough rate is the measure of how many people clicked on a hyperlink, CTA, or image within an email. To calculate email CTR:
Source: SuperOffice
The average B2B email open rate is 15.1%.2
No matter how you utilize B2B email marketing as part of your organization’s channel mix, the following tactics are must-dos to improve your email clickthrough rates.
1
Targeted, Engaging Content
B2B buyers are thoughtful about investing in the right product or service. There’s more research involved and the sales cycle is typically longer. That’s why B2B email marketing campaign content should focus on educating first and selling second. Think useful, engaging content backed up with credible references, case studies, research, and more.
2
Personalization
BEYOND THE SALUTATION! Email marketing personalization involves thoughtfully considering your email recipients’ industry, job function, priorities and pain points to create customized and ultra-relevant email messages (customer personas and journey mapping are especially useful here).
Other personal touches like including the prospect’s name and/or your sales reps’ contact information also help to create relevancy and build rapport.
3
Compelling Offer and Call-to-Action
This is how you’ll draw the recipient in, entice them to act and allow the interaction between your brand and your target audience to continue.
Offers are especially important in B2B marketing campaigns. In simplest terms, an offer is what you intend to give the prospect, i.e. the “what’s in it for me?” You’ll of course be asking for something in return. To be effective, your offer should reinforce your brand promise. It should compel action and be interesting enough to entice your prospects. It should also be tailored to where your prospect is in the sales cycle.
For example, you might offer a free whitepaper download in exchange for basic contact information (offered to a larger quantity of prospects early in the sales cycle). Or perhaps a new iPad in exchange for a meeting with one of your sales reps (offered to a more targeted group of qualified prospects who are closer to the purchasing phase). You might even consider a mix of both for added engagement opportunities.
4
Conversion-Driving Landing Page
In a B2B email marketing campaign, your landing page is the moment of truth. If the recipient is interested enough to click through to your page from your initial email, this is where they’ll come to learn more about your brand, product/service and (hopefully) take you up on your offer by taking the desired action.
Here’s a quick guide to creating a High-Converting Landing Page.
See These Tactics in Action
Here’s how these 4 essential B2B email marketing tactics look in a real-world example for EyeMed Vision Care. This sample from a Data Security Awareness Campaign was part of a multichannel campaign, including series of emails, aimed at to engage HR and benefits professionals among key accounts.
