B2B Email Marketing and Lead Nurturing

B2B email marketing is an effective marketing tool for lead generation. Emails are a great way to connect with potential customers and clients. According to the statistics,“93% of B2B Marketers use email marketing to distribute their content.” B2B Marketers know that it’s important to look for strategies that work for the entire sales pipeline. Email marketing is a robust tactic that can do both lead generation and lead nurturing. Isn’t it WOW?

Absolutely! Now, let’s have a look at some interesting and quick facts about B2B email marketing:

• 73% of the B2B Marketers prefer communication from businesses via emails.
• 59% of B2B Marketers say that emails are their biggest source of ROI.
• 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers.
• 78% of marketers say that email is important to their overall company success.

B2B email marketing refers to an email marketing strategy that specifically targets the businesses rather than the individual customers. However, B2B email marketing tactics are quite similar to the traditional B2C email marketing strategies.

Often what happens is that lead enters the sales cycle but doesn’t proceed to conversion. Lead nurturing is the process of pushing those leads ahead in the sales funnel. In lead nurturing you communicate and listen to the needs of your prospects and try to build a connection with them.

You need to communicate your service as a solution to their problems and build credibility. For doing that you need to connect with them at every stage of their buying journey. This makes your potential customers believe that you actually care about their problems.

Lead nurturing campaigns are of different types which we have mentioned below.

• Welcome: These types of campaigns are carried out for the new customers or the prospects who have just entered the sales funnel. Emails that are informative, educational and clear are sent to them. For effective results you must do A/B testing to know what content is bringing you maximum conversion.
• Educational: This type of campaign is based on content that focuses on educating and informing the prospects. These are done for the prospects that are at the initial phase of their buying journey.
• Promotional: These campaigns are focused on pushing the leads at the bottom of the sales funnel by providing discounts or special offers etc.
• Product/ Service: This type of campaign is based on the typical aspects of a product or service in which the potential customers have shown more interest.
• Event engagement campaign: These types of campaigns are focused on the engagement prior and later the registration is done by the prospects. This includes webinars, workshops and live events etc.

A lead nurturing email campaign is a campaign carried out by B2B marketers to influence and impact the buying journey of the potential customers. The aim is to educate, inform and provide value content and make them believe that you are the best choice in the market.

These email lead nurturing campaigns can be automated using the email automation tools and you can schedule send them. You can gather information, data and conduct user behavior research through emails and create more personalized lead nurturing programs.

Now, we will tell you some of the best B2B email marketing best practices that you can implement in your strategy:

Foremost important thing when you start your email marketing campaign is to build an accurate contact list. According to a study, “Email lists naturally degrade by 22% each year”. This might be due to unsubscribed recipients and abandoned domains etc.

So, you must check for unsubscribers and add new contacts to the list that might be interested in your services. You should also filter out the contacts based on their response to your emails and send personalized content.

What’s the first thing that you see when you receive an email?

Well of course the subject line! Having a catchy and impressive subject line is important to make

people open email. Usually the subject line is the first thing that people notice and based on that they decide if they should open the email or not. Thus, you must try to craft a unique and attractive subject line that catches the attention of the people.

A subject line should be short and crisp and between 28 to 50 characters. The recommended length of a subject line is from 28 to 39 characters as it is ideal for the mobile users. According to the reports.”46% of the emails are opened on mobile.” So, this is a key factor that you must keep in mind while writing the subject line for your email.

People these days have got many choices and they only want the best for themselves. So, instead of bragging about your services you must show them that you care about their problems. A simple way to do that is to personalize the content that you send them.

According to the report by 99 firms, “Personalization is the top strategy for 47% of B2B marketers in 2020”. Tailoring and sending relevant content to the individual receivers increases the chances of conversion. You can build an instant rapport by offering personalization that other businesses might be lacking. This will help you in getting the ball rolling with the new leads and the potential customers.

One of the most common mistakes that B2B sellers make is having a dry and formalistic tone to their emails. This is because they want to sound smart, professional and competent.

However, it doesn’t work well in B2B email marketing as you might think. You must be perceived well by your audiences for that it is important that  you shouldn’t sound stale. The best approach for B2B email marketing is to use conversational tone and keep the interactions fun and engaging.

The main purpose of sending emails is to compel the potential customers to take action. You must use a clear call-to-action button at the end of the emails. Make sure that it is clearly visible to the viewers and is placed at an appropriate position.

Try to use a sentence before CTA that creates an urge in the receivers to click on it. You can simply nudge your prospective client by adding messages that say it’s for their benefit not yours.

Often B2B marketers make the mistake of not measuring the success of their B2B email marketing campaigns. You must use a reliable B2B marketing analytics tool to measure the success of your email marketing strategies.

Knowing the KPIs and relevant metrics helps you to understand the successful and unsuccessful aspects of your lead nurturing campaigns. Based on that you can improve and make necessary changes in your marketing strategies.

Lead nurturing is an important part of a B2B marketing strategy. Using lead nurturing best practices can help you to push leads ahead in the sales pipeline and get better conversion rates. According to the reports by Marketo,“Companies that do lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads.” You must develop B2B email marketing best practices that can aid you in B2B lead nurturing. We have mentioned above many lead nurturing and B2B email marketing tactics that you can implement to reap better results.