18 Experts Share Email Marketing Best practices for B2B Companies

data-driven marketing tools

18 Experts Share Email Marketing Best practices for B2B Companies

Email marketing is a little different for B2B companies than B2C companies. So we asked the experts to share the best email marketing practices for B2B companies and their advice may surprise you.

Gamify It

Games and gamification elements are an incredible way to compel people to behave in a certain way and have fun doing it. In the email outreach space, we include HTML5 games in millions of outgoing email messages every month.

These game experiences are promoted in the subject lines of the emails, dramatically increasing open rates.

 

Make It an Experience

We view the email itself as an experience rather than simply a marketing message, so those customers who take the time to open the email have a fun and engaging experience (rather than feel annoyed or duped, as so often happens). This has led to dramatic increases in click through rates, often two, three, even four times traditional campaigns. Simply presenting an incentive in a better way and always looking for ways to enhance the customer experience in the email (and all other marketing touchpoints) leads to far better overall performance: a win-win for the consumer and the business.

Aaron

Aron Ezra, CEO – OfferCraft

 

 

Know Your Audience

 

Ask yourself, if I were receiving this email, would I read it or delete it? Would anyone other than my competitor care about this?

 

If your email doesn’t include interesting or useful information to your *recipient*, delete it and try again. We all receive tons of emails per day from people soliciting us for their product; unless an email is of use, it is tossed.

 

Include a Call to Action

 

What is it you want your recipient to do? If you want them to download a whitepaper, include a link or two to the document as well as an image. If you would prefer they reply to your email, consider personalizing the blast with the name of their account manager to reply to. If it is not very clear to your prospect what you wish their next step to be, how will you ensure your email has an impact?

 

Sharon Harry, ​Director of Marketing – Metropolis Technologies​

 

 

 

Keep it relevant and useful

 

Only send e-mails to a highly targeted audience and make sure the information in those e-mails is relevant

to them, useful and interesting. And don’t send out too much! I do one or two e-mail campaigns a month.

 

Follow Up Emails Are Everything

 

Use e-mail for scheduled lead nurturing. I’ve seen 40% click through rates for one-month-out follow-up e-mails that I send to recent prospects. If I send out 100 e-mails to prospects from the last month, I also typically will get about 5 or 6 e-mails back from prospects requesting a quote or additional information. Those may not seem like big numbers, but we sell niche capital equipment so five or six active prospects is huge.

Nancy Lauseng, Marketing Manager – Jet Edge

 

 

 

Keep emails Short and Personalized

 

Send very personalized emails of no more than 6 sentences, like you’d be emailing a friend. Example: I always open with “Hey firstname, how’s it going”. My subject lines are very specific and typically ask a question.

 

Make Your B2B Marketing Emails Valuable

 

Offer something valuable in the email that would be of direct benefit to the recipient. Example: invite to an exclusive event, webinar, ebook.

Lloyed Lobo, Growth – Speakeasy.co

 

 

Make sure your copy doesn’t suck

 

Most companies leave a lot to be desired by their outreach. Often it’s too drab and bland, which causes it to get lots in the fight for attention.

Think about the last 50 emails you received soliciting services, did any of them stand out or was it all the same old thing, different company. Be fun and playful, but also be to the point and focus on the benefits for them.

 

Make the landing page relevant

 

The worst thing a company can do is talk about their services outside of the brand language. It can cause subconscious confusion and distrust almost instantly. Keeping your graphics and copy on the same page from email to landing page instills a sense of familiarity that could be the difference between a lead and someone who never comes back.

 

Jamil Velji, Easy Automated Sales

 

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Keep Sales Lifecycle in Mind

 

Recognize that for many B2B products, the sales funnel is lengthy. With that in mind, craft email that offer high value content such as demos, guides, webinars, tips, etc. This allows one to demonstrate expertise, build confidence, and move the recipient deeper into the funnel.

 

Bonus: Such content can double as organic / social content growing top-of-funnel metrics.

 

Ryan O’Donnell, Director of Marketing – Avalara TrustFile

 

They Have to Want It

 

Make sure that the recipient *wants* your email, and is *expecting* your email. Otherwise what is going to happen is that your email will end up tagged as ‘spam’, and every time that happens, you run the risk of more and more (and eventually all) of your email going to the junk folder, or even being blacklisted.

 

Make Unsubscribing Painless

 

Make sure that you process unsubscribe requests quickly, effectively, and permanently. This is not only the law, but sloppy unsubscribe processing leads to spam complaints, which leads to decreased delivery to the inbox.

 

Anne P. Mitchell, CEO/President – SuretyMail

 

Test, test, test!

 

So often, email marketers are on deadline to get their email out the door, but in today’s world, not testing is simply unacceptable. Marketers should test device (mobile and desktop), email clients (such as Gmail and Outlook) images, subject lines, and content. Tools like ReturnPath and Litmus can be incredible resources.

 

Put 1:1 employee email to work!

 

1:1 employee email continues to be a critical communication channel for business, and employee emails (think Gmail / Outlook) are routinely the most frequent touchpoint between a business and the outside world. Consider that a typical company of just 100 employees sends 1,000,000 one-to-one business emails per year on average. Tools like Sigstr can turn these emails into a marketing opportunity by automatically including a clickable graphic campaign to the bottom of every 1:1 email sent (promoting things like content, events, or open positions).

 

Teresa Becker – TKB Consulting

 

 

 

 

Go mobile.

 

You want to send out an email that renders well across all tablets, smartphones and desktops. A mobile-optimized email implies that you pay attention to detail and – if you put that much effort into your email marketing – you likely put that much effort into other aspects of your business.

 

Include articles from other B2Bs, and get them on your mailing list.

 

Flatter other influencers in your industry by featuring their articles in your newsletter. Be sure to announce your newsletter lineup on social media, and tag them if possible. You should also send out a personalized email to the author of the article to let them know that they’re featured, in case they want to see it or sign up for the newsletter.

 

Emily Culclasure, Digital Analyst & Marketing Coordinator, seoWorks

 

 

 

Keep it Clean

 

Businesses need to make sure they have clean data before sending to any prospects. If your data mislabels the administrative assistant as the CEO (or vice versa), your email will end up in the trash. Having a quality data source ensures that you don’t immediately alienate your leads.

 

Know how the B2B decision-making cycle works

 

Consumers can usually purchase a product immediately without anyone else’s input. Businesses, however, make decisions as a group and require more players and time to come to a decision. Your emails should cater to this decision-making process. Instead of telling your prospects to buy your product now, send them an email requesting a conference call. This allows prospects to feel out your product so they can determine if it’s the right choice for them.

 

Makenzi Wood, Acquisition Marketer – Visual Net Design

 

 

Rely on your copywriting rather than your photo finding.

 

Think of your email as the cast, not the hook. The hook is your brilliant product and/or content.

Cameron Conaway, Content Marketing Manager – Flow

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Try a Plain Text Direct Reply Renewal Message

 

Why? People are busy. Make it look like a real person sent the

message and make it simple text (no visible HTML elements). Have replies go to a real person. Tell them you know they’re busy and they just need to reply to the message and you’ll get them all setup to renew. This works especially well for businesses that need to re-up large teams. You do the work for them.

 

Recycle Old Blog Posts to Make a Course

 

It repurposes old stuff that is all loosely based on the same topic. I used to get tons of people to sign up for a “free course” (just an autoresponder series linking to a series of blog posts in the same category). I told them exactly what they’d get when they’d sign up too “40 days, 13+ lessons, nothing held back and 100% free”.

 

Curtis Peterson, Digital Marketing Manage – SmartFile

 

 

 

Keep it short.

 

Business clients (like you) are busy running their business.

They don’t have time to read long emails. If you’re sending essays to their inbox, they’ll tune you out and eventually unsubscribe. Make it easy for them to click and absorb your message quickly, or bookmark and come back later. The easier you make it for them, the more success you’ll have.

 

Build value.

 

Business owners are shrewd. Before you ever send an email, remember that they’ll always read it thinking “What’s in it for me?” You better answer that question. The value should be front and center – in the headline, in the content, in the links. Don’t bury the lead, and don’t waste your time or theirs sending an email without a clear benefit.

 

 

Emily Adams, Content Marketing Specialist – Automated Marketing Group

 

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There’s More Opportunity Than You Think

 

Most companies mistakenly think that email marketing and life-cycle marketing is about sending a weekly or monthly newsletter. But if that’s all your company does, you’re leaving vast potential on the table. Instead of weekly or monthly newsletters, engage customers based on their position in the customer life-cycle.

 

Target on a Granular Level

 

Target customers on a granular level, increasing conversions, average order value and lifetime customer value, instead of generic, un-targeted “blasts.” Brands need to look deeper into email marketing and create not just one, but a series of email campaigns that have triggers based on the behavior of their customers from the very start.

John McIntyre, Founder – ReEngager

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Ask for permission to email people

 

In B2B email marketing, your reputation is on the line, so you need to do it right. Along with the obvious — never using purchased or rented lists — there are some less apparent practices for true permission marketers. Avoid automatically adding prospective customers to your subscriber database from a hardcopy signup at an event. Instead, send them an email reminder or invitation that makes it easy to subscribe. Only email people who have given their explicit permission for that specific content through double opt-in. Include easy unsubscribe links in every message.

 

Prioritize your subject lines and connect them to clear campaign goals

 

You’re competing for attention with a cacophony of B2B and B2C companies clamoring for inbox attention, so be 100% clear about your campaign goals. Then, put equal effort into your subject line as you do for your main message content. Subject lines play a pivotal role in determining whether your subscribers will view your content or keep scrolling. Use subject lines that trigger positive emotions and convey a benefit. Finally, customize subject lines based on campaign analytics to notch up your results even further.

 

Susan Brown Faghani, Manager, Marketing and Sales Communication

L-Soft

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Subject Line is Everything

 

Many email marketers forget that subject lines are crucial. Using an email marketing software like MailChimp will allow you to customize subject lines with the recipient’s first name. This adds personalization and draws attention to the email as many people quickly scroll through their inbox on their mobile device. In addition, research suggests that showing excitement in subject lines increases open rates. Small business owners might consider adding an exclamation mark at the end of a subject line.

 

Genia K. Stevens, Managing Partner – Belwah Media

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Personalize your message.

 

Personalizing your message is the best way to ensure you get a response. That should not be a problem if you are sending them one at a time. You can still use a template, or copy and paste. Just leave yourself some room to make your customer or prospect feel like they matter. Some easy ways to do this are: using the person’s name, including their business’s name, and asking questions about their industry.

 

Don’t let your email or IP address get blacklisted.

 

Many email providers have a spam blocking feature that will blacklist IP and email addresses if it’s determined that they are sending too many marketing emails at once to people who have not asked to receive them. If your address is blacklisted, you may not be able to get your emails delivered at all. When doing a mass email campaign, be advised that you must adhere to the rules set forth in the CAN-SPAM Act. While there are multiple guidelines, the most important ones are including a valid physical postal address and a link for unsubscribing.

Grace Horner, Director of Public Relations and Social Media – infofree.com

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Know when simpler is better.

 

Beautifully designed emails with photos, story layouts, and other great features have their place, but for some communications, simpler, shorter messages work better. Experiment to see what gets the best response and engagement for different audiences and types of emails.

 

Have a very clear call to action.

 

Focus on just one call to action per message. Tell the recipient what the email is for and what they need to do next to get the reward – whether it’s information, an opportunity, or to beat a deadline – that they are looking for.

Beth Bridges, Vice President of Digital Identity – J – I.T. Outsource

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9 People To Help You Grow Your Business in 2015

data-driven marketing tools

9 People That Will Help Your Business Grow in 2015

Let’s be frank. Every founder, marketer, and growth hacker’s resolution this year is to grow their business. So let’s help you get started.

We’ve assembled a list of nine people you should follow to help you take things to the next level. Let the growth begin!

 

sujan patel

Sujan Patel
Focus: Growth Hacking

If you’re looking for practical, easy growth advice, Sujan’s your man. Sujan has over a decade of marketing experience and shares advice like how to use customer service to increase conversions and how to get better results from your content marketing on his personal blog SujanPatel.com. If you need proven ideas to help you grow, grab a copy of Sujan’s new growth hack book 100daysofgrowth.com. He lays out 100 of his best growth hacks ideas you can put in to action each day.

P.S. Sujan’s giving away 10 copies of his book for free here 

 

lincoln murphy

Lincoln Murphy, Sixteen Ventures

Focus: Growing SaaS Companies

Lincoln Murphy is a pure SaaS genius (I’ve once referred to him as the ‘SaaS Whisperer’ and I stand behind this). Every question you’ve ever had about growing a SaaS company is answered on his blog. If you want to know the the truth about how to handle pre-pay renewals, optimizing your enterprise pricing page, and how to cut churn with growth hacking from someone with experience, just follow him and take notes.

 

heather morgan

Heather Morgan, SalesFolk

Focus: Writing Cold Emails that Make You Money

If you’re venturing into the cold world of cold emailing, you need Heather. This economist turned cold emailing queen breaks down everything it takes to craft an email that makes you money. Heather’s awesome blog covers actionable tips about cold email and outbound sales. Need some quick wins? Check out Heather’s posts on how one cold email got 16 new B2B customers, the one line never to use in your cold email, and how to write an email that will never be ignored.

 

greg ciotti

Gregory Ciotti, HelpScout

Focus: Using Psychology to up your Content Marketing

 

Gregory is the content marketing lead at Help Scout and despite fierce competition in the helpdesk software space, has built a content marketing machine that fueled 678% growth. If you want to know how to make your content marketing pay divendeds, follow his personal blog at Gregory Ciotti.

 

Dan Norris, WP Curve/Helloify

Focus: WordPress, blog conversion

Dan’s knowledge of content marketing and WordPress can help you use WordPress and optimize your blog for conversions. Learn how to be data-driven about customer service, and create life-long customers from Dan on the Helloify blog.

Ryan Battles

Focus: SaaS growth

If you’re trying to grow a SaaS startup, Ryan can teach you how to build a growth machine by finding your ideal customer and their pain points, creating a marketing site that converts visitors, and choosing the right kind of analytics as you gain traction. He’s also writing a book about SaaS growth marketing.

 

Danielle Morrill, Mattermark

Focus: Distribution Hacking

Danielle coined the term distribution hacking, which is marketing that creates an unfair advantage for businesses. Danielle’s forte is teaching businesses how to get attention. On her blog, she teaches you  how to launch the right way, how to use targeted customer acqusition to grow, and how to get press with a small budget.

 

Justin Mares

Focus: Gaining Traction

Justin was formerly Director of Revenue and Growth at Exceptional Cloud Services  (later acquired by Amazon) and has created many digital products like an online course to teach marketer’s SQL. Justin blogs about topics like competitive research for startups and SaaS pricing and with Gabriel Weinberg wrote Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers to help early stage startups.

Nathan Latka from Heyo

Focus: Acquiring Customers on Facebook

Nathan helps small businesses acquire customers on Facebook. Learn how to double your email list from Facebook, run Facebook contests that convert, and stay up to date with what small businesses need to know about Facebook. The Heyo blog is a valuable resource for in depth guides on expanding your organic reach on Facebook and using email marketing and Facebook together.

 

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13 Marketing Tools for Data-Driven Marketers

data-driven marketing tools

13 Marketing Tools for Data-Driven Marketers

Today’s marketer needs lots of data to make smart decisions to drive growth. The problem is, valuable data is hard to get without coding skills.

If you ever want to know which content drives sales, which lifecycle emails convert users into customers, or which incentive in your referral program actually works, you need the right tools to do the job.

Here are 13 tools that will help data-driven marketers do a better job without bothering their programmers.

popcorn metrics 

Popcorn Metrics – It seems like every marketing tool needs some sort of code install. And even after begging your developers to install them, there’s always changes that need to be made. Luckily, Popcorn Metrics solves this problem. Popcorn Metrics is a tool that helps marketers install new analytics tools without a developer. So any new analytics or email tool you want to use on your website you can set up yourself. Segment.io is another option you can use.

referral marketing software - referralsnip

Gleam – Referral programs are the go-to “growth hack” for many companies (think Dropbox, Instacart, Dollar Shave Club). But most referral programs are hard to set up, especially if you want valuable data from them. Gleam solves this by making it easy for anyone to set up a robust referral program in minutes. WithGleam you can build your own referral program snippets and add them to your lifecycle emails, landing pages, email newsletter sign up thank you pages, post-purchase pages, and more. Once live, you can A/B test, get data on which channel drives the most referrals, and see what drives the most conversions.

Screenshot 2014-09-21 12.50.25

Autosend – Lifecycle marketing (particularly email marketing) has graduated from a nicety to a must-have. But you can’t understand it’s true value without amazing analytics. Autosend solves this. Autosend helps you send lifecycle email and SMS messages at the right to your customers based on their actions. You can get great data on open rates and click rates, segment and send messages to certain groups that meet certain criteria, and get a detailed report on your best performing messages.

 

ducksboard

Lucky Orange – If you’re part of a small team, chances are you don’t have a dedicated team to help you keep track of how customers behave on your site. This is a perfect job for Lucky Orange. Lucky Orange shows you exactly how many people are on your site right now and how that compares to the past. You can quickly compare historical statistics and see what keywords, locations, referrers, tweets, languages, etc. are driving traffic and behaviors on your site.  For alternatives, try Loop11 or MouseFlow.

getmetrics

Getmetrics – Need better information about what’s going on in Stripe? Getmetrics can do the job. Getmetrics shows an overview of your revenue, fees, charge backs, and more. You also get one-click access to information about customer downgrades, upgrades, or trial conversions. All this data is available without building your own dashboard or signing into Stripe everyday. If you need an alternative, Baremetrics is another tool that can help.

 

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surveygizmo

SurveyGizmo – Quantitative data is nice, but qualitative data is awesome! Unfortunately, getting this valuable feedback is hard since the traditional way is on a website or through email. SurveyGizmo changes this. SurveyGizmo helps you distribute your online surveys using email invitations, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media – all from within SurveyGizmo. And not only do you get more ways to collect data, your can create super-interactive surveys that validate your respondents’ answers.

fullcontact

Fullcontact – Your customers, email subscribers, and users are more than a number. And you can get the data you need to find out exactly who they are with Fullcontact. Fullcontact helps you learn more about an email address. You can find out the name, age, location, twitter handle, title, and more with only the email address of any new person in your database.

litmus

Litmus – Knowing your email marketing open rates and click rates are great. But what if you could see how long people read your email, which device was used to read it, and get details about how many times it was forwarded? You can with Litmus. Litmus is a beautiful and simple tool that helps you test and measure your email marketing. Almost anything you want to know about what happens after your email is sent, Litmus can tell you.

simplegraph