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If you are looking for an effective B2B lead generation strategy, email marketing is something you should definitely explore.
Many B2B businesses understand the importance of email marketing for lead generation, but what they lack is a good execution part.
That’s why this blog post.
In this post, we’ll go through strategic steps to launch your next email marketing campaign for B2B lead generation.
So let’s get started.
1) Build your B2B Prospect List
The days of buying an email list are over. Not only does it hurt your brand credibility, but also doesn’t help in lead generation and sales. You need to collect email through various strategies and send emails to only those who opted-in.
Gather a list of leads who are expecting your email or somehow engaged with your brand in the past.
2) Segment your List
If you are sending the same emails to everyone on your list, it will not be that effective. Consider the behaviors and interests of your leads. See where they are in the buying stage. The behavior may show what blog posts they read, what ads they checked out, what products were they browsing on your website.
You will not want to send a sales email to a person who is just checking out your website. This will only drive away the customers.
You should create a series of emails to nurture your newest leads. The emails will educate and inform the prospects about your business. Leads who are already nurtured can be entertained with deep information about your product and how it can improve their life, thus invoking an interest in your brand.
3) Know your Timings
To create an effective lead generation campaign, you need to get into the prospect’s head. This is especially true for B2B email campaigns. People read business emails in the morning while dealing with their professional life.
Most festivals don’t help B2B companies in creating offers, but you need to know the time of the year when your business record the highest season, and create offers around this season.
4) Write Effective Subject Lines
Most of your B2B prospects are busy with their day-to-day tasks and taking care of their business. An average subject line will be ignored or worse, even marked a span. You’ve got very little time to convince your prospects, and you need to utilize it properly.
What makes a good subject line depends entirely on your product and the sales cycle, but generally, the purpose of the email should be stated upfront. Don’t use click-bait headlines just to get your email clicked.
5) Use a Personal Email ID if Possible
Many businesses have found that emails sent from an individual ID have a better response than those sent by a company’s name. People these days are concerned about their privacy and hence an individual’s name in the email might help them connect better.
If you have an email series, then it’s definitely recommended to use an individual’s id. This way, you can create a relationship with the leads. Test what works for your business, but don’t use generic emails addresses like noreply@brand.com.
6) Use Simple Design
The best B2B emails always have the simplest of designs. Don’t use more than two fonts at a time, have abundant white space, and if possible, images. Most people scan through the content, hence make it easier for them to absorb the information.
The number of images and text you use depends on the type of product you are selling. Whatever you do, keep your email concise and to the point. People don’t have time to read long and complicated emails. So give them something they can quickly absorb and understand.
7) Have a Compelling Call-to-Action
Lead generation email campaigns have a specific purpose, to build relationships that will eventually lead to sales. But if your email doesn’t have a compelling CTA, it will not be effective.
Determine the end goal first, and reconstruct your emails from there. Many B2B email marketers send a nice helpful email, but never take it to the next step. Your CTAs should compel your audience to take the next step in the sales process. And use buttons instead of links to increase the click-through rates.
8) Encourage Audience Engagement
You have a better chance of converting prospects into leads if your emails can have a two-way conversation.
Your CTA could be about feedback about your email, or any specific thing they would like to improve. By opening the lines of communication, you are humanizing your brand and showing that there is a person behind these emails. This will help you build trust and improve open rates in the future.
As an added bonus, the email replies could be an opportunity to understand your customers. This will help you improve your B2B email marketing strategy.
Make sure email replies are monitored, and emails are responded to quickly.
Some Quick B2B Email Marketing Tips
1) Get Automated
Automation in B2B email marketing is a must. It starts with a good email service provider, that allows for good automation. Good email automation helps you create workflows, set up CRMs to capture leads, and promptly respond to customer queries.
Automation takes time to set up. You need to know what elements you want to automate. But once done, you can reap the benefits for a long time.
2) Be Mobile-Friendly
Even in the world of B2B, mobile-friendliness has become extremely important. Even the B2B prospects access the information through their phones. So keep your emails mobile-friendly. From email templates to text length to images, everything must be first designed for mobile. Make sure this is carried throughout your CTAs, landing pages, and the website.
3) Test, Test, Test
Most B2B email marketing is experimentation, so don’t be afraid to test new ideas. There might be something specific that works for your brand but goes against the conventional wisdom. This can only be known if you test new ideas. Try different subject lines, CTAs, and designs for the same products and see which email gives the best results.
4) Analyze Your Results
You need to analyze your B2b email campaigns, irrespective of whether you succeed or fail. You need to know what elements worked and what didn’t. Analyze your open rates, click-through-rates, unsubscribe rate, lead generated, leads qualified, and sales. Set up a structured reporting format that gives you the exact information you need to know.
Conclusion
Many factors need to be considered when designing a B2B lead generation campaign. What works for one company may not be true for others. That’s why testing is an important part of any email campaign.
While following the above-mentioned points, you may generate some qualified leads, despite that, you need to test your own ideas. The points mentioned above will give you a good framework to get started.
