A lot has been written about persuading consumers to click and buy. You probably know of some of the popular B2C (Business to Consumer) best practices.
Business to Business email marketing is different in many ways. Yes, there is a person on the other side reading your email, granted. But the business context, makes that many of the precooked B2C marketing “rules” don’t apply. Whoops! So what does a strong B2B email campaign make?
Especially when tapping into the strengths of B2B email marketing to promote your products and services, it is important to strike the right chord.
Nobody ever bought an airplane after reading one email
A Boeing 747 Airplane isn’t bought on impulse. Often you will deal with long buying cycles, so realize that B2B recipients will not buy the instant you email them. This means multiple emails spread over a longer period of time, maybe in the form of well-thought-through, event-driven email marketing geared toward lead nurturing. Marketing automation forms the core of this process.
“You can’t shortcut relationships.” – Scott Stratten
Content sells better than a great offer
Analysis of the campaigns of B2B email marketing agency Admitter shows that in 90% the Call to Action link text “more info” wins from a Call to Action texts like “try me now” or “buy now.” A confirmation that telling before selling works in most cases, especially if information is aligned with interests and profile of the B2B recipient.
In most cases the recipients want to be informed about options, read helpful or entertaining content, or see references in the form of cases. Most people won’t get excited from just “look at our possibilities.” They crave engaging content. This shows that you must find creative ways to convey the message. Don’t sell the product but the content. Adding to that, each stage of the buyer descision asks for his own type of content as the table below illustrates.
There is no such thing as a CEO
In targeting your B2B email marketing newsletters, a selection based on function title seems attractive. For instance, targeting all managing directors. They call the shots, right? But there is no such thing as a CEO. A freelancer is a CEO, the owner of a local restaurant is a CEO, the managing director of a wall street enterprise is a CEO.
But these CEOs have completely different profiles. There is a huge difference in behavior and a gigantic gap in the type of information they seek. That means you’ll need to mix function title with other selection criteria to find the right audience. On its own, company size turns out to be a much bigger predictor of reaching the right person in your target group.
B2B Buyer persona
In B2B email marketing it has become pupular to use Buyer Persona’s to envision the person behind the purchase.
Tony Zambito defines Buyer personas as: research-based archetypal (modeled) representations of who buyers are, what they are trying to accomplish, what goals drive their behavior, how they think, how they buy, and why they make buying decisions. Today, he also includes where they buy as well as when buyers decide to buy.
As you will understand, B2B Buyer Persona’s have everything to do with buying behavior and not much with profiling, B2B companies are looking to find the “story of buyers”.
Using data, means prioritizing data sources
A lot of the data inside and in external sources can help to get a better image of your customers and leads profile. To do it is important to bring together the different sources. Many will speak of a Single Customer View, but in reality we’d like to pick and mix and start with bringing together the most valuable sources first.
In B2B environments the “company graph” is often a valued asset, it includes all information about a company such as size, industry, roles, geo etc and can be used to enrich your own data or score your priorities on.
Aim for the DMU
In the B2B process, a purchase decision is often not made by a single person. A group of people is involved with the purchase of your product or services; together they form the Decision Making Unit (DMU). Targeting your email only to the influencers or only the final decision makers is a common pitfall, because both groups play an important role in making the final purchase.
A member of the DMU will look at your B2B email marketing campaigns from his or her own perspective. So it is crucial to adapt your message accordingly. All marketers say they would like to segment more (both more often and deeper), but in B2B email marketing this is even more prudent. Their differing roles mean they have other “pressure points”; a chief financial officer will have other concerns than a technical director or marketing manager.
Email that correctly addresses these pressure points will have a much higher email engagement. The takeaway? Put an email marketing strategy in place to diversify your messages and collect additional data points for targeting purposes.
B2B email marketing
An email is an email, but just translating B2C email campaigns to B2B is a huge pitfall. In B2B there is quite a need for professional email marketing, but often a lack of channel-specific knowledge. Email is still the workhorse of B2B marketing, bringing in conversions and adding value across the customer lifecycle.
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Great article, Jordie! Thanks for including the Brainrider Content By Decision Stages table.
One additional b2b email marketing technique we have very good success with is to include multiple content options and CTAs in a single email. The traditional “push one offer” direct mail approach doesn’t achieve nearly the click-through rates that a “choose your own adventure” multi-stage, multi-topic approach does.
Coupling that technique with marketing automation tracking on the back end will boost both your email marketing engagement rates AND your prospect profiling insights (by knowing what they do and do not click on).
Email
marketing is an efficient way to stay connected with your clients while also
promoting your business. Thanks for sharing.
[…] Unlocking the full potential of B2B email marketing […]
The ideas shared related to B2B Marketing is very effective. Do you know with the ever increasing B2B sales and rapidly expanding global network, organizations today face a tough challenge dominating the competition and gaining substantial market share. Moreover to answer questions like “Where are we now?, Where do we want to be?, and How do we get there?”, companies require a concrete strategy to help comprehend and answer these questions at hand. You can see more at http://goo.gl/a0avMz
Hi Jordi, can you recommend me some good books on B2B? Do you have a workshop for B2B e-mail marketing for “Europe”?
Hi,
There are some good books on B2B, depends what you are looking for Feel free to jump on email (jvrijn@emailmonday.com) and discuss if you would like to do a workshop.
Hi Jordie,
I have sent you email kindly check!
A strong email campaign depends most importantly on the data accuracy of the leads your investing in. Typically, most data providers will build a list on your behalf with the criteria you requested. Most of the leads I invested time and money came from LeadFerret.com. High quality and full of contact information.
I found great source of prospects and new clients at leadferret.com. With over 30 million b2b contacts with emails and links to social media profiles it’s a no brainer to use their service.
After several months of searching for b2b leads, I decided to check out a site called LeadFerret(dot)com
Jordi- would love you to try out our email address service http://holaconnect.com., meant for B2B marketing. One can generate mails and change the way the connect to their prospects. We have over 300 million profiles globally and its for free. Its something that you would really appreciate i think!
B2B email marketing is a very useful and result oriented gun from promotion’s point of view. Here you can get some good knowledge about B2B email marketing.
the best e-mail marketing software is this http://www.emailmasivo.com
Hi Jordi,
Can you help me with a content for B2B lead generation I’m little confused with the content.
Matt
What a detail article.
Hats off Jordie
Insightful article! Thanks for sharing this wonderful and useful B2B email marketing.
[…] Het opnemen van de data-infrastructuur verandert de hele insteek van een martech RFP. Het maakt het meteen een flink stuk ingewikkelder. Van belang is direct zoveel mogelijk afstand te nemen van een ‘theoretische waarheid’ of ‘droombeeld’. En in een gesprek/overleg is het veel te moeilijk om inzicht te krijgen in wat de slimste aanpak is. Maar wanneer je de data-systemen tekent, wordt het veel duidelijker. En voor het samenbrengen ziet dat er ongeveer zo uit:Bron: Email Monday […]
[…] big part of your action plan will include the roll-out of that content using B2B email marketing. Email is a strong channel because it allows you to capture the contact and get commercial opt-in […]
[…] As Jordie van Rijn rightfully points out- “nobody ever bought an airplane after reading one email”. […]