10 Tips for Successful B2B Email Marketing Campaigns

B2B Email marketing campaigns are essential elements of B2B marketing strategies. They communicate and build relationships with prospects, gather important data and help boost marketing ROI. As important as these campaigns are for marketers, many miss the mark and continue to fall short on the campaign’s return.

To build, execute and maintain effective email marketing campaigns, marketers must pay close attention to their audience and the message and avoid the common trap of simply blasting out self-promotional messages. This only leads to recipients hitting the delete button more than opening your message.

To get you on the right path for campaigns that boost lead nurturing and returns, here are 10 tips for successful B2B email marketing campaigns:

1. Email campaigns as a dialogue – Many marketers follow the “batch and blast” method of email campaigns. This achieves the objective of sending out email, but not adding to the dialogue with prospects. Look to extend the conversation by listening, add relevant value and engage prospects with meaningful communication via email marketing campaigns.

2. Evolve past click through rates- Standard metrics are important, but evolve beyond just statistics by exploring all the information available. Pay attention to things like where prospects went on the web site, number of visits, visit frequency and how you can segment them based on their behaviors.

3. Segmentation –Consider combining the standard segmentation criteria with behavioral data to create more complex segmentation strategies. Look at data including: who opened the email, whether they downloaded the offer, and the length of time they spent on the web site.

4. Focus on the message – Remember email campaigns send out more than communication – they send out a message. Use these campaigns to tailor your messages according to the prospect’s profiles, interests and actions. Consider sending different emails/messages to the different segments of your list when appropriate.

5. Automate where needed – Saving time spent on sending out campaigns is key to increasing the time needed for creativity and strategy. Use your marketing automation solution to automate campaigns based on event and behavioral triggers and have more time to build relationships with prospects.

6. Create a mix of styles and methods –To avoid having your email campaigns underperform, consider mixing up campaign styles and methods. Always be testing components like different delivery days and times, different content angles, surveys and fulfillment pieces.

7. Deliverability – Even the best plan will fail if your message doesn’t reach the inbox of your intended recipient. Proof your messages beforehand and identify any issues that may prevent your message from getting to your prospect’s inbox. Avoid common spam trigger words like free, opportunity, offer and click here.

8. Testing – To achieve optimal results from your email marketing campaigns, testing is a requirement. Consider testing subject lines along with standard A/B testing to ensure the right message goes to your prospects inbox. You can also test other elements including: images, change in copy or other small revisions. Also be sure to test the deliverability of your email with a small in-house group prior to delivery and make sure that all your links go to the right pages.

9. Analyze your results – Email marketing campaign reports don’t all require large data dumps into Excel or hours of number crunching. Leverage the reporting dashboards in your marketing automation solution to get the details out in a format legible for all. Use these details to understand prospect interaction and improve future campaigns while boosting marketing ROI.

10. Keep in touch with prospects – Utilize check-in emails to build the relationship with prospects over time and gain useful feedback. These messages are another way of keeping the lines of communication open and letting your prospects know you’re not just an automated message.