Originally published January 26, 2021 , updated on September 4, 2024

By now you should know that marketing is a wide field. Whether you’re looking to generate leads, build brand awareness or drive sales, there are many strategies available. There is one thing every marketer should know: while not all your potential customers are on social media or avid blog readers, pretty much all of them use their email regularly. Moreover, when it comes to B2B, email is still the quickest and most effective channel of communication for receiving and transmitting data. Therefore, email marketing can still be profitable and effective – provided you know what you’re doing and know how to adapt your strategy to your audience. That’s where this list of B2B email marketing tips comes in. 

Why Do Businesses Need a Good Email Marketing Strategy?

I am sure that most of you are pondering on the above question. What’s the point of creating a dedicated B2B email marketing strategy? What are the benefits, and how can such a strategy help my company or the company I work for? 

Vital Design has a few numbers which could shed some light on this.

1. According to their report, 72% B2B buyers are willing to share useful content via email. This means that your emails won’t just end up in a spam folder. Once someone from your target audience receives your content, there is a good chance they will also share it with other people from their “social cluster.”Like the shares you get on a social network, B2B buyers are likely to forward useful emails on to their friends and colleagues.
2. For every dollar spent on email marketing, you get a return on investment of 44 dollars. That is a huge ROI, considering that most other traditional marketing platforms cannot deliver those types of numbers. For instance, influencer marketing pays no more than 6.5 dollars for every dollar spent, a rate almost 7 times lower than what we can achieve with a successful email marketing campaign. That doesn’t mean that you should forget all other types of marketing and branding, though. It means that email marketing should not be neglected and building your email list should be your top priority. It’s effective and as we are going to see in this article, easy to implement.

Five B2B Email Marketing Tips

Now that we know email marketing is effective when it comes to B2B sales and B2B lead generation, let’s dive in a little further, and talk about some of the best B2B email marketing tips.

1. Understand the Differences Between B2B and B2C Marketing. 

B2B marketing, although similar to direct marketing, it is not the same thing. The clients behave differently and they make different choices. In B2B marketing, you are addressing a more rational audience. B2C customers are sometimes less informed about what they are buying, and they are more susceptible to whims and recklessness.

B2B clients, on the other hand, know right from the start what they need. They usually don’t base their buying decisions on whims or indulgences. Rather, they make more rational decisions based on what they need, focusing on good quality and good price. Consequently, when addressing B2C clients, you need to take these differences into account. 

2. Pay Attention to Your Email Header

This is one of the most important visual aspects of your email campaign. Even if you have the right kind of content for your audience, you need to catch their attention first. This is what your email header needs to do.

The average office worker receives around 121 emails daily, so you have just a few seconds to get them interested. This means that you need to transmit something, a clear message, right from the header section, the first thing your audience will notice when they open your email.

What do you need? Well, you need a clear vision of what your banner should look like, you need your logo to be visible so that your audience to be able to recognize you and you will also need a tool to generate and design that banner. You need to save time and at the same time, to deliver a professional look. In order to do that, I recommend you to use an online tool such as Bannersnack, a great choice for creating great-looking email banners.

3. Get Your Title and Subject Line Right

Think about your subject line as if it is going to be the only thing your audience sees. Why? When your email lands in your client’s inbox, the first thing he or she will notice is your subject line. You only have a few seconds to make them curious about what you have to offer. This is why you need to tell them everything they need to know right from there.

On the other hand, the title is also important, should you manage to get the client to open the email. Your subject line is  what will convince your audience to click and open the email. The title is what should convince them to read the rest of your content. Little tricks like adding an emoji can also spice up your subject lines and increase your CTR. Out of the 5 emails below, which one below stands out to you? 😉

4. Don’t Address Your Email to the CEO

Considering that your goal is to generate B2B sales and leads, you need to know that not all the decision making individuals from your targeted audience have the same roles in their companies. While your first impulse may be to contact the CEOs from the companies you have targeted directly, this is not always the best choice. Why?

Let’s say you’re selling automation products. There are institutions that need these products but there are also big companies, the local shops, individual entrepreneurs and so on. Different kinds of people are in charge of supplying these types of goods to their companies.

They all have different educational backgrounds, different social statuses. You will address CEOs, business owners and maybe even their employees and this is why you need to create a message that will be easily understood by anybody.

5. Create your Content

Once you have an eye-catching header, a snappy subject line and a good title for your newsletter. Now, it’s time to give your audience something of value to read. It’s time to create content that will generate B2B sales and leads.

Things to consider:

1. Pick evergreen topics. You’ll need something more valuable to add to your email than just simple product descriptions. Ideally, you should be creating valuable evergreen and relevant content for your audience. The best content is that which manages to answer questions, or provide tips and tricks – like the best B2B email marketing tips. You can also offer articles and advice that your audience can apply in their own lives or businesses. The goal should be not only gaining new customers, but also keeping the existing one interested. This is important, because it costs five times as much to attract a new customer than keep an existing one.

1. Make sure the content is unique. People listen to different kinds of music because music makes them feel in a certain way. They usually buy from brands for the same reason.  They make decisions based on the brand’s ability to trigger some emotions. Alternatively, the brand must provide a convincing reason to buy from them. Nothing differs when it comes to content. You need something unique, something to tell your audience that you did not only put an effort into this but also, that you have something of value to give them.
2. Choose quality instead of quantity. You don’t need to write a novel to send a message. The length of your email shouldn’t be a concern, as long as you’re delivering value. What you deliver should be of great quality, though also not too much information. You can even create extremely short newsletters and still get great ROI if your messaging is effective. Effectiveness, in this case, means that you should make your point in as few words as you can. Your text and images should also be professionally composed and processed. Additionally, your style should be properly adjusted for the type of audience you’re addressing.
3. Make the content easy to read. Not everyone likes reading long articles or big blocks of texts, especially if they’re receiving many other emails every day and don’t have time to pay attention to all of them. Ideally, you should make use of headings and subheadings, as well as bullet points where relevant, to make sure your text is easily scannable. You can also highlight the most important pieces of information. Keep your sentences and paragraphs short, and make sure you have enough white spaces.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that email marketing is an effective marketing strategy. Whether you’re addressing individuals or businesses, building your brand or trying to drive sales, email marketing works. These B2B marketing tips are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good start on building your email marketing strategy. 

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