February 2022 | MarAutomation | B2B Demand Generation Agency

The fact that email marketing still remains one of the most effective ways to build quality relationships with leads and customers alone indicates that it’s indispensable for businesses. It is through email marketing that most of the marketing events get started.

For instance, if you are conducting a webinar, you’ll send a series of emails to invite people. Emails will also act as a way of politely thanking everyone who made it to the event.

Clearly, email marketing is the foremost means of healthy communication between businesses and customers. What this means is that your email marketing strategy should be creative and well-thought-out. Putting in half-hearted efforts can result in the loss of valuable deals, which can further translate to slow business growth.

But, the good thing is creating an effective marketing strategy isn’t all that hard if you know all the elements that need to be implemented. This blog aims to tell you exactly that- how to create a kickass email marketing strategy to help you drive more sales.

Start with a broad plan

The very first thing you have to focus on is creating an outline for how things should proceed. Before you start writing emails, it’s imperative to define your audience. This will allow you to target the right people, thereby increasing engagement and conversion rates. You should be aware of the signup sources, as it will help you know at which stage a particular prospect or lead is.

Now that you are clear about your target audience and where they are coming from, think about what kind of content will engage them. For example, if you are selling quirky coffee mugs, the content should be peppy enough to appeal to young people (think about including pop culture references).

But this would be a bad content strategy for a B2B company pitching software. The content in that case should be more professional and to the point.

After this, timing and frequency will come into play. How many emails are you sending to prospects? Are you reaching out to prospects way too often even if they are not responding? Are you reaching out to prospects at the right time? These are all important questions and you need to make sure that you are not misusing your audience’s information.

Email Marketing Strategies

Now, that you have an outline, it’s time to move on to specifics:

1. Personalize your emails

This one is pretty out there, but it’s worth mentioning that without personalized content, email marketing is no good. Understand your prospects and build the content around them. This will ensure two things- firstly, since you have a clear idea of your target audience, you will only reach out to relevant people, and secondly, you will pitch something that interests the prospect.

You are more likely to get positive results by personalizing content and understanding the needs of your audience. But, there’s always a limit to everything, so make sure to not go overboard.

2. Segment your audience

Before you even think about sending emails, you should segment your audience. Why? The answer is quite straightforward- you’ll see higher engagement rates, meaning increased open rates and click rates, and more prospects are likely to respond to your email (which is the ultimate goal of email marketing).

While it may not be possible to segment the audience on all of the touchpoints, go for as many as you can. Geography, timezone, browsing behavior, age, purchasing behavior, and previous engagement rate are some key areas for audience segmentation.

3. Create catchy subject lines

Most of the time, the open rate of an email depends on its subject line. It should be interesting enough to grab the attention of the reader but not misleading. It’s not as easy as it seems, because you have to keep the subject line short. Also, a good idea is to end the subject line with a relevant emoji. In the end, this part will and should test your creativity.

4. Keep your emails mobile-friendly

These days a lot of people use multiple devices for different purposes, and the same is true for checking emails. Therefore, it is highly significant to ensure that emails are mobile-friendly. This especially goes for campaigns where you are including images, videos, product browsing options, gifs, or any other interactive element. If such emails do not have a responsive design, then your campaign may backfire.

5. Conduct A/B tests

A/b testing is an essential step, more so if you are just starting out and haven’t figured out yet what works and what doesn’t. Running an a/b test on your current campaign will give you necessary and detailed insights about the sort of content strategy you should be using, which type of subject line works best, what time is better for sending out emails so that the engagement rate is high, and basically how people respond to different elements in emails.

Trials and errors are part of the game, but you can minimize them if you implement a/b testing right at the beginning.

6. Leverage marketing automation

This is an important one. Marketing automation is essentially a way to streamline your entire campaign. A marketing automation tool will give you insights to improve the content strategy, schedule emails, and follow-ups, and pull out reports that will help you come up with better strategies in the future.

Chances are your campaign consists of drips, and the way to effectively implement those is through marketing automation. You can schedule the entire drip and the tool will take care of whether or not the second or third email should be sent based on the reaction of the prospect.

7. Have a re-engagement strategy in mind

Even if you come up with a cool and effective email campaign, a lot of prospects may not even open your email or the entire sequence. That does not mean your idea was bad. Email marketing works on probability, which means you can’t be sure how recipients are going to react.

Hence, it is a good idea to have a re-engagement plan in place. Ask the prospects if they are interested in your product. You can also conduct a survey, a poll, or ask for feedback. This way you’ll know if the prospects on your list are relevant. If not, you can clean up the list and include people who will convert in the future.

8. Make sure to a send test email

It’s just common sense to send a test email before you launch the campaign. Doing so will let you know about any kinks that you need to take care of. For example, extra spaces, any grammatical errors, font color, and size, whether or not the images or any other elements in the emails are responsive, and so forth.

9. Include an “Unsubscribe” option

If you are not respecting prospects’ privacy and not giving them the option to opt-out, you’re setting yourself up to fail. There are a lot of privacy laws in place these days and rightly so- they protect consumers from any sort of digital fraud. Therefore, you should make sure to not force your service or product on anyone without their consent or approval.

A lot of times it also happens that a person is no longer interested in a product that they might have liked before. They should be able to opt out of your email list easily. This is why you need to ensure that there’s an unsubscribe button and that the email recipients can find it easily.

10. Pay attention to reporting and analytics

After every email campaign, you should ideally review metrics like open rate, click rate, and unsubscribe rate. These reports will help you plan your next email marketing strategy in a better way by showing you how many people you are able to engage. For example, if the unsubscribe rate is high, you’ll know that you have to work harder on the email copy and provide something of value to the recipients.

Moreover, experimenting is the way to find out the new technique that works best. But if you are running a lot of experiments, you also need to stay ahead and keep a tab on what is yielding better results. This is where reporting and analytics come in.

In Closing

Email marketing is the best and most effective way to reach your audience. You are not directly intruding in their lives while making sure that they know you exist and will be at their service when and if the need arises.

Just ensure that you are following all the best practices and reviewing your strategy constantly to get the best results. Also keep in mind that focusing on basics, including content quality and privacy, is important to master email marketing.

Email marketing is a yielding channel for almost all companies, and this holds especially true for B2B companies. This is because, in the B2B space, you need to communicate directly and put your point in a straightforward manner. And this has to be done in a way that holds the client’s or prospect’s attention.

But this is also where it gets tricky. How do you capture someone’s attention while still being direct? In order to run a successful email marketing campaign, you need to have a good idea that puts your point forward in a not-too-boring way, to say the least. It’s all about maintaining a delicate balance of creativity and sincerity.

Today, I have a number of campaign ideas that you can put to use for engaging your prospects and converting them into clients. Let’s get to it then.

Email Marketing Campaign Ideas

1. Welcome emails

The phrase ‘first impressions stick’ is popular for a reason. For a business to be successful, you need to make a good first impression on your clients. This can be done easily by sending a good welcome email to all your new subscribers.

Let the clients know that you are grateful and open to providing all the support they may require. You can include links to guides to make it easier for new customers to get started with your product or service. Or, if you are building a subscriber list, you can put links to important resources or blogs that may help the new joiners understand the industry better.

Basically, tell the new people on your subscriber list that you are there to help.

2. Activation emails

People have a lot on their minds these days and it’s easy to forget stuff. For example, someone may have subscribed to your service, but they are not using it. Days go by and you see no activity from their end.

It may have just slipped out of their minds. A quick and polite reminder though can be helpful in this situation. Let the clients know what’s waiting for them on the other end to pique their interest. It’s kind of like when credit card companies check on you when you haven’t used your card in a while. The point is, checking on your clients may prove to be helpful.

3. New products/features emails

A budding business means product/service growth, which can entail the addition of new solutions to the palette or the addition of new features to an existing product/service. Whatever the case, always make sure to let your customers know about any new developments that are happening.

Firstly, this is a great way to keep a conversation going. Secondly, new products or features may be of more use to your existing client base. And lastly, you get to expand your business right through trusted customers.

4. Event updates

Events like webinars, fireside chats, or virtual lunches are pretty common in the B2B spaces. The reason for this is that such events act as a great way to attract high-value customers. Since this is an important activity, your email marketing strategy needs to be strong.

From inviting people to the upcoming event, following up with them a couple of times, and then thanking the ones who showed up, a lot of work has to be put into such a campaign. Briefly let the recipients know how a particular event could add value for them, and if possible, end the email with a sense of mystery so that prospects are left wanting more.

Also, ensure to clearly state the time and place of the event. Make it as easy as possible for the recipients to sign up, which means putting the signup link in the emails.

5. Offers

Offers and gifting activities are a great way to lure in clients, after all, everyone likes to shop during end-of-season sales. You can set up criteria and prospects who pass it can leverage whatever discount you are offering. This way you also get to close high-value clients.

Free trials are also a good way to establish trust with potential clients. You can offer to get on a demo call with people who opt for free trials and show them how your service or product can be useful. You get to start the relationship based on actual proof and the customer won’t feel like they are just taking a leap of faith.

6. Use FEAR

When I say ‘fear’, I don’t mean you need to literally scare your prospects, but use it in a constructive way. You need to tell the prospect that the way they are conducting business or some aspect of it, might actually be harmful in the long run. You get to be the person who will take care of the situation and come up with a contingency plan using your service or product.

For example, if the prospect is running a website, you can let them know they might be violating Google’s policies with a certain practice. You can then offer to run an audit for them and tell them what the problem is and how it can be fixed.

7. FOMO

This works in a similar manner as the last point, only here, you are playing on prospects’ fear of missing out. You might often have seen emails with subject lines like “Don’t miss out on a 50% discount” or “You are missing out on the deal of your life”. Well, these are some mainstream examples, but if you get creative, FOMO is a great way to capture the attention of your audience.

One thing that you need to take care of here is to not use just a subject line that plays on the emotions of the prospects while the content doesn’t exactly offer the same. This is a bad trick and could lead to a falling out between you and your audience.

8. Curated content

Suppose you have built a great list of subscribers and you are constantly showing them good content. Even though it may seem like the work is done or you are on track, the work does not finish there.

What you can do next to move prospects down the funnel is segment them on the basis of their interest in your solutions and then start sending them curated content on that particular niche or industry. This allows you to target your prospects more precisely. You can also introduce a section of gated content that is specifically meant for prospects who are ready to convert.

9. Re-engagement emails

Oftentimes, prospects become cold and stop reacting in any way to your emails. You may also find that a particular lead that was deemed unfit for your business is now a good fit.

In such cases, re-engagement campaigns can help you get out of the throes. Using a more direct approach helps convince inactive prospects.

Basically, you need to nudge them a bit and see if they are still interested in your services. Offering them a free trial or some other such activity can be of use here.

10. Thank-you emails

The world may keep telling you to be strong and ruthless to get your way, but this isn’t really the case in the digital marketing world. If you are hoping to be on good terms with your client’s prospects or leads, you have to be polite to them.

The good news is that it’s the easiest thing to do. You just have to thank them for standing by your side choosing you or agreeing to give you a chance to prove your worth. Be humble and let your clients know that you appreciate them.

Leverage your thank you emails in different situations- for example, when someone signs up for your service when someone attends an event when you cross significant milestones.

Final Thoughts

The good thing about email marketing is that it is highly versatile in nature and you can practically think of a thousand different ways to use it for growing your business. You can use emails to maintain relationships with existing customers and definitely use them for building new relationships. It’s an easy and effective way to get in touch with the right people.

All you have to take care of is the basics and have a tinge of creativity. This way you will have yourself an email campaign for growing your business.

Monthly Archives: February 2022

10 Effective Email Marketing Strategies to Drive More Sales

Start with a broad plan