I’ve rounded up the top 13 examples of B2B email marketing campaigns, to give you some inspiration. From government organizations to small software startups, you’ll see that there is one main thing these campaigns have in common – their efforts are highly focused on their respective audience and personalized to real people – which makes them all successful.
While analyzing over 100,000 emails we’ve identified the following email marketing campaigns that were successful enough to be considered best examples of B2B email marketing campaigns. While not every company has an unlimited budget, B2B companies have much more freedom in what they can do with their customers than other industries. This means you can convince your boss to craft an awesome email marketing campaign at almost any budget.
What is B2B Email Marketing?
Business-to-business email marketing means a particular type of email marketing strategy where you focus your email campaigns on businesses instead of individual customers.
Although business-to-business (B2B) email marketing tactics can be misunderstood with traditional business-to-customer (B2C) strategies; there are several significant discrepancies between the two. And your ability to be a successful B2B email marketer depends on how deeply you understand these differences.
When marketers identify the small differences needed for B2B email marketing, they’ll likely see huge improvements for their email campaigns.
Let’s have a quick look at these top B2B email marketing statistics from 99Firms:
- 90% of excellent B2B content marketers prioritize the audience’s informational requirements.
- Personalization is the most widely-used strategy for 47% of B2B marketers in 2020.
- Email marketing was the most executed B2B marketing method in 2019.
Tips for a powerful B2B email marketing strategy
Think about your customers and grasp the differences
B2B marketing is not the same thing as direct marketing. Customers are behaving differently, and they make various choices. In B2B marketing, you’re targeting a more rational customer base. Why? Regular clients are sometimes less informed about what they are purchasing; they are easily affected by whims.
Meanwhile, business customers know what they need right from the start. They do not make their buying decisions depending on whims or indulgences. Instead, they make rational decisions based on what they require and a good quality versus price ratio. As a result, as you address business customers, you need to accept that they are different and act differently than regular clients.
What types of customers should be addressed with B2B marketing?
- First, some companies use your products to produce other products. For instance, a company buys textile materials to produce T-shirts.
- Second, some companies use your products for office automation or other secondary tasks. For instance, a company that purchases computers, pens, or paper from you.
- Third, some governmental agencies and institutions can be considered potential customers if your products satisfy their requirements.
- Lastly, some reseller companies purchase your products and then redistribute them to other customers.
Add a call to action
People often wonder: “How many calls to action do they need to include in their emails?”.
The answer is… It depends.
That’s because various types of content need a different number of calls to action. For instance, in your weekly newsletter for potential customers, you may add many calls to action directing to different suggested products or services. Meanwhile, in your B2B emails, you had better keep things more concentrated by including only one call to action.
For your B2B email campaigns, you may lead your audience down to a single, robust call to action. When they reach the link or button, they are inclined to click on it.
In short, your email should include the following elements:
- A subject line that targets what the audience needs and builds curiosity
- Necessary and result-based information
- One strong call to action
Pay attention to the email header
This is the most crucial element of your email campaign. If you want B2B sales, you’ll need content suitable for your audience. However, it would be best if you grabbed their attention first.
An office worker receives more than 100 emails every day on average, and you have a few seconds to make them interested. That means you need to convey something, a clear message, right from the header section, the very first thing your customers will see when they open your email.
Divide your list based on interest levels
If you want to keep your email content on point, then you’ll need to segment your list according to your customers’ interest levels in your brand.
By doing that, you have the chance to provide a new email experience that’s personally relevant and useful to your recipients.
Use cross-channel coordination and automation
For B2B marketers, marketing automation has appeared as an important trend that can support their businesses. As customers use different channels and sources to acquire information, leveraging omnichannel marketing for your messages makes sense. Experiences people have outside the email channel will decide whether they keep subscribed to your list or not.
According to Daniel Burstein – the Senior Director of Content & Marketing at MarketingSherpa and MECLABs Institute, every interaction your audience has with your business (via email or other customer touchpoints) will leave an impact on the success of your best email marketing program. This is because it will influence customer satisfaction and brand perception.
A strong value proposition will guarantee that your automation and coordination attempts are geared towards the customer’s demand.
Automation in B2B email marketing service can be a good way to acknowledge the action that customers or leads have taken and lower the chance of them feeling bewildered, uncertain, or annoyed. It can be claimed that automation might be the perfect way to foster customer relationships.
Re-engagement email campaign
“Hello? Still there?”
A long time after you run your B2B email campaign, you might notice some subscribers are inactive. What occurred?
Don’t worry! Whether your inactive subscribers are too busy or no longer interested, there is hope.
You can build a B2B re-engagement campaign targeting inactive subscribers. This is divided into a series of 4 emails:
- Send a reminder: Check in with your customers and let them know that you’re still here.
- Include an incentive: Exclusive content, free shipping, promotion codes, etc., anything that encourages your subscribers to stay and keep enjoying your product.
- Generate urgency: Add a countdown timer to the body of your email. Let your customers know that they might miss a significant benefit if they don’t engage with the time frame.
- Say farewell: Keep it friendly, and add a CTA so that the customers can re-subscribe in the future.
Grammarly adds a “wrinkle in time” badge, an exciting way of noting that time has passed. They also insert a bright red call to action so that the receivers can rapidly re-engage with their product.
Webinar
Webinars can be considered a great way to grab your customers’ attention, as well as offer them valuable and relevant insights. Utilize your B2B email campaign to make a date with your customers so that they can watch your live stream.
In the following B2B email, NewsCred attracts their subscribers by implying that they will miss the chance to explore a marketing performance metric if they don’t join the webinar. As sharing a webinar initiation, a bit of FOMO never harms!
Bear in mind that you can use your webinar emails as a chance to stay in touch with any subscribers who missed the live webinar by offering them a follow-up link to the recorded version.
Curated email content
It’s not a piece of cake to create an organic mailing list as it was 15 years ago. People are more and more cautious about revealing their contact information or subscribing to newsletters.
Eventually, as new subscribers come on board, what they really need from you is value. They’ll only allow you to enter their inbox then they’re convinced your brand can provide meaningful and useful content that will benefit them.
When you can gain subscribers, it depends on you to deliver on your promises and address your audience’s expectations.
An excellent way of meeting these expectations is by sending emails that contain curated content from a number of other sources on the Internet. Accessing a huge amount of high-value content in a single email saves people time, and they’ll highly appreciate content that isn’t always promotional. Sending curated content, you express that you care about your subscribers holistically rather than only caring about their money.
This welcome email by General Assembly brings value to customers by giving out a curated collection of images from numerous sources.
Announcement
Another B2B email marketing example you might be familiar with is the announcement email.
Many brands leverage email marketing to keep their subscribers updated with huge changes at the company, such as the launch of new items, a website overhaul, or they got an award.
These are precious chances to get back into the minds of your subscribers, and people will likely be curious to read through the news or see a new website or product. This type of announcement helps maintain the relationship between B2B companies and their customers warm, letting brands remind their subscribers why they subscribed in the first place.
After some publicized criticism of Uber’s management, Uber kept its followers updated by sending announcement emails when the brand had some big changes to their leadership. Utilizing emails to inform the users meant that Uber could regain its customers’ trust and reassure them of the brand’s commitment to providing safe and worry-free rides.
Uber employs an announcement email to inform customers of new changes that will advance their service.
Conclusion
Email marketing is one of the most powerful and immediate ways to reach out to a large number of prospects fast. B2B marketing campaigns deliver complex messages using the traditional method of email marketing; newsletters, direct mailers, and ad-hoc emails to an established audience because leads don’t always search for your services. Use email marketing to establish your brand authority, generate leads and increase sales.