B2B email marketing campaigns cover a range of topics that work to enhance your brands' equity with a concerted goal of gaining connections to a network of product and service buyers. One major area of this go-to-market strategy is creating an attractive email with a high open-rate.
Most B2B campaigns can be derived from analytics and logic; others not. Forming a segmented strategy can greatly help in this regard. Moreover, testing different ways to target segmented audiences will greatly improve ROI. Part of this is to measure the value of your business relationship and value proposition with your targets. If they're not interested, you'll be the first to know.
Questions to ask are many. Here are a few… Do they know you? How do they know you? Where are they? Are they a prospect, lead, or client? What are their pain-points in conducting business? Is this a pennies-on-the-dollar future client? Will this be a volume buy? Can this be a high revenue one-time purchase? And, how will you motivate interest to increase open rate?
This list could go on and on. Planning your strategy will change your campaign content to focus on a new world of higher open rate engagement.
Sounds plausible, right?
Here are some compelling statistics that support well-executed B2B email marketing campaigns:
For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on investment (Marketo)
72% people prefer to receive content through email, compared to 17% who prefer social media. – MarketingSherpa
A message is 5x more likely to be seen in email than via Facebook. – Radicati
Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%. – Aberdeen
Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%. – Aberdeen
The key takeaway from these statistics is simple:
More engagement
More leads
More conversions
More sales potential
This is all well and good, but you’re probably asking yourself how do I create such a high performance-marketing tool? Great question. This is not easily determined and takes work.
To help, here are 3 steps that will help guide your decision making on which tool to use and how to form a marketing strategy.
1. Select an ESP – Email Service Provider – MailChimp, EXACT, ConstantContact
Selecting an ESP is critical to the delivery of your email campaigns. I have noted a few above, but there are many. Questions to ask are related to functionality and engagement.
What opt-in options are available?
Does the ESP have the design functionality for HTML, Text, and adapts to mobile environments?
How does it integrate with databases, landing pages, form builders, video, and various email servers?
What engagement options do I want?
Will my campaign leverage auto-response?
Will it integrate with triggered timed nurture campaigns?
What is the functionality of tagging, groups, and segmentation?
These questions are good to know before selecting an ESP. There are certainly many more and having a qualified marketing professional can help in this selection process.
2. Hire a Specialist to Create, Monitor, and Measure Campaigns
Having an internal or external marketing person that knows email marketing strategy, design, and interaction will drive better ROI. This person will be key to lead generation data, distribution, and sales enablement. This person should be deeply engrained in all ESP activity and leverage all aspects of the platform. Most importantly, having a definitive performance report on all campaigns will exhibit ROI and better ways to connect.
3. Goal Definition and Email Campaign Objectives
What action do you want your audience to take? Do you have an environment that can easily accomplish this action? What do you want your targets to learn? Is it building brand recognition? Creating a connection to products and services that drive more leads? Or, does your sales force need to push a certain product line to secure end of quarter targets?
Simply creating an email and pushing it out to different groups won’t suffice. Your ROI will suffer greatly and you will lose your audience quickly.
In overview, begin by strategically defining your goal and the objectives that match a desired measurable outcome. Augmenting your content to drive engagement will increase ROI and conversion when testing your audience. Lastly, take the time to research and secure an ESP that can handle everything you wish to do today and tomorrow.
Be sure to consider the 3 steps outlined in this article and other tips found on our blog, or connect with us for more information.