B2B Email Campaign Ideas to Drive Engagement – Litmus

B2B marketers continue to rely on their most effective channel—email—due to its proven performance and high return on investment (ROI). Since potential customers are already 57% of the way to making a decision before they actively engage with sales, marketers must be savvy. It’s important to be intentional with how and when you communicate your message by tapping into B2B email campaign ideas with proven success.

B2B email strategies need to carefully consider factors like business initiatives and challenges subscribers are facing that are promoting more interest. While marketing to businesses requires a different approach than marketing to consumers, many of the same strategy tactics can still be applied.

Read on for B2B email campaign ideas that will improve your email engagement and performance, and boost your brand presence.

What is a B2B email campaign?

B2B (business-to-business) email marketing is creating and sending email campaigns to businesses instead of individual buyers. B2B email campaigns engage with decision makers individually, and collectively, who are making purchase decisions on behalf of their place of business through work email. The job of B2B emails is to educate buyers through the sales funnel to conversion. The email should be geared toward businesses and organizations in messaging and call-to-action.

A B2B email campaign addresses the company’s challenges or pain points, working to educate them and correspond with their place in the journey from awareness, consideration, decision making, and finally, loyalty and advocacy. B2B email campaigns are important for building trust and loyal customer relationships.

B2B email marketing campaign best practices

The purpose of B2B emails is to familiarize another business or organization with your company, how you can help them, and nurture them to become a customer through email correspondence. While this sounds like a natural progression, the road is not straight and narrow from beginning to end. And the job of email marketing campaigns is to engage every step of the way.
Remember, business decision-makers are still people, and helping them involves an empathetic yet direct approach.

Use conversational language

Just because you’re sending a B2B email campaign, doesn’t mean it needs to sound corporate and stuffy. You can still incorporate personal, conversational language without sounding unprofessional.

Audiences appreciate authenticity and relatability. Staying human with your communication makes your business more genuine and trustworthy. A great brand experience builds trust quickly. Communicate with empathy for their problems and encourage continued engagement with your brand to learn how you can address obstacles they or their teams are facing.

Use email to facilitate direct communication and get to the root of their purpose for connecting with you so you can help them find solutions.

Make sure the content is scannable

B2B email subscribers are busy and likely have a full inbox. Use short, concise sentences in your email copy to quickly convey your message. Make your message easy to scan so the reader can find what they need. Keep in mind, 80% of email users read messages on their phones and the clock is ticking for those messages to render. Emails that don’t show up correctly on mobile devices are deleted in just three seconds.

Remember to limit CTAs (calls-to-action) to only the most important steps you want readers to take, and make them easy to find and follow. Also, consider where the reader is in their journey to make sure the action aligns with their goals at that point.

Make sure your messages are mobile optimized, for images and texts. Using responsive email designs will allow your emails to show properly no matter where they are opened. Also, be sure to dive into your subscribers’ email client market share breakout. If your audience is heavily comprised of Outlook users, account for common rendering issues so every subscriber can see your email content.

Write engaging subject lines and test them

Your subject line and preview text are your chance to entice your audience and tease your content. Customizing both for every B2B email campaign lets you stand out from the competition, before your email even gets opened. Be sure your subject line and preview text are compelling and complement each other for maximum effectiveness and address why the reader should open your email.

Tips for writing engaging subject lines and preview text include:

• Avoid spammy words and all capital letters
• Use emojis, but do so sparingly and dependent on email clients used by your audience
• Incorporate action words to increase urgency
• Always be testing and ready to adjust

Personalize the emails you’re sending

To create effective B2B email marketing campaigns, it’s important to understand your audience. Take the time to break out buyer personas and position your emails to your target audience. You can apply segmentation and personalization to best tailor content and product suggestions through automation for more customized messages that resonate with your reader.

B2B subscribers are looking for solutions and measurable results, mainly the return on investment (ROI) of using a product or service. This should be clearly articulated as it pertains to their position in the company or role in the decision-making process to capture attention quickly and effectively.

Use email content to build progressive profiles

Every interaction audiences have with your brand is an opportunity to learn more about them and their pain points. This is especially true with email due to direct connection with subscribers who have raised their hands to learn more about your company or product.

B2B emails give your business the perfect opportunity to build your CRM data based on engagement over time. With the help of progressive profiling, you can create a more robust profile more organically and continue to refine your email personalization strategy with every send.

How progressive profiling enhances B2B email strategy ideas:

• Initial information can help create segmentation to develop lead-nurture campaigns based on high-level information like job title, company size, and industry
• Profile information helps you communicate more effectively, addressing pain points sooner, and shortening the sales cycle
• Personalized email messages build trust and loyalty between brands and subscribers

B2B email marketing strategies ideas may take extra time and consideration but with the help of personalization, automation, and an overall understanding of your audience, the extra work pays off. Crafting a careful B2B email strategy that incorporates a human approach helps build long-term relationships with the business and the decision maker—and that’s something they will remember.