According to some recent studies, B2B companies allocate about 10 percent of their revenue to marketing. If you’re going to dedicate that much money to marketing efforts, you want to make sure they’re bringing you the largest possible ROI.
When it comes to email marketing, there are a few strategies that can help you to improve your outcomes.
The key to good B2B email marketing is to know your audience and all the different roles that make up their team. Read on to learn more about B2B email marketing and how you can tweak your strategy to make your emails work better for you.
Create a Target Customer Profile
When you get ready to launch a B2B email marketing campaign, the first thing you need to do is to create a target customer profile.
Your profiles will determine how you style your email marketing and what sort of content you include. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to make these profiles as specific as possible.
One of the challenges of making a B2B target customer profile is that your target “customer” can actually include dozens of people.
Think about how your target customers make buying decisions and what sort of budget they’re likely working with. Consider which organizations they’re likely to be affiliated with, and ask yourself what sort of values they hold as a company.
Segment Your Subscriber List
Segmenting your subscriber list means dividing it out into subcategories. These subcategories will determine who gets which emails.
In general, there are 6 different types of customers you’ll want to create segments for.
- Initiators are the first people at a company who discover your product and spark interest in it.
- Users are the people who will be using your product every day.
- Buyers are the people who handle the logistics of a purchase.
- Deciders are the people at a company who decides if buyers will be moving forward with the purchase or not.
- Gatekeepers are the administrators who manage the information flow at the customer company.
- Influencers are the people at a company who impact the decisions of other people in their organization.
Focus on Buyer Interests
Once you’ve segmented out your B2B email marketing list, it’s time to start deciding on what messages you want to send each segment.
As you might guess, each role will respond better to a different type of content and messaging. During this stage, you want to get into your buyers’ heads and think about what’s going to create the most value for them.
Initiators and influencers may want to hear about new and exciting developments in your company. Users may be more interested in feature tutorials.
Deciders and buyers will want to know what gives your product extra value. Gatekeepers may want to find out about new sharing features.
Consider the Stages of the Customer Journey
In addition to segmenting your email list by role, you may also consider dividing customers into stages of the customer journey. A customer who has been working with you for three years isn’t going to be interested in the same content that a customer who only found you two weeks ago.
There are five basic stages of the customer journey:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision-making
- Retention
- Advocacy
During the awareness and consideration stages, you’ll want to provide potential customers with plenty of information about all the unique features your product offers.
In the decision-making stage, you may want to focus on how you can provide value for their company and send personalized promotions. Once a customer has moved to the retention and advocacy stages, you should focus more on how to use your product and get feedback.
Use Email Templates
Although your content will be the heart of your B2B marketing emails, the presentation is critical, too. You want to make sure your email design matches your company branding and appeals to each target customer. You also want to build a sense of consistency in your emails.
Email templates can be a fantastic way to make your email marketing process faster and to deliver consistent design. Many email service providers offer pre-made templates that allow you to drop in your content and design gorgeous emails in minutes. You can also design a template from scratch with modular building blocks to create the perfect look for your emails.
Automate Your Marketing
Another great way to scale your B2B email marketing is to automate as much of the process as possible. While you will still have to generate plenty of content for routine newsletter emails, you can set up some basic emails to go out when certain triggers are activated.
For instance, if you haven’t heard from a lead in a while, you could send an automated follow-up email offering to address any questions they may have.
Better yet, you may be able to set up your system to handle some of your email segmentation for you. Many email service providers can automatically set up new contacts in your system based on information that gets entered into your site.
Some can even sort users into the appropriate segment based on their behaviors.
Learn More About B2B Email Marketing
B2B email marketing requires a little different focus than traditional email marketing does. You’ll want to segment customers based on which role they fill in their company, as well as where they are in the customer journey.
You’ll need to tailor your content based on which group you’re emailing, and tools like templates and automation can give you the time you need for this kind of personalized marketing.
If you’d like to learn more about B2B email marketing, check out the rest of our site at Nerd Rush. We can help you drive your sales with SEO and website design. Start online today and find an array of digital marketing services tailored to fit your business’s needs.
