5 Effective B2B Email Marketing Examples
The average person sees marketing as a business-to-individual channel. A company creates an ad for their product, a potential customer views it, and a sale occurs. Voila!
However, most business owners know the reality—B2B marketing is essential when your client base consists of other companies. And in the world of B2B, email is a crucial tool. In fact, over two-thirds of B2B marketers use an email campaign to elevate their business.1 The downside? The more businesses that use B2B email marketing, the more competition for inbox space.
Luckily, our digital marketing agency can give some pointers to make sure your company’s email marketing campaign stands out in the inbox and the reader’s mind. Keep reading to learn the top B2B email marketing examples, from Welcome emails to exclusive offers and beyond.
5 Examples of B2B Email Marketing
Not sure where to start on your B2B email marketing campaign? Luckily, we have a few examples to help you out.
Whether targeting new prospects or following up a successful event, there’s a B2B email format to match as well as email marketing trends to follow. Explore the categories below to construct your own engaging message.
#1 Welcome Emails
A Welcome email is the friendly handshake to a new subscriber, prospect, or customer. And for the most part, it’s a pretty charming handshake. Welcome emails have an incredible 82% open rate.
Most welcome emails are automatically sent after a subscriber provides their email address. However, it’s important to still make every Welcome email feel personal. Include engaging factors like:
- A “Welcome” subject line
- Friendly language
- Opportunities to take action
- Personalization (names, current offers, etc.)
#2 Newsletters
B2B newsletters can be tricky, but they provide an opportunity for your company’s branding and expertise to shine. It’s all about finding the balance between engaging content and efficient communication.
In these long-form emails, you can give customers a deeper dive into your business. Consider sending a periodic email newsletter on these denser topics:
- Monthly calendar of events
- Company announcements
- Industry news or discoveries
- Guidance and advice on related topics
Most importantly? Don’t let your email newsletter look like a newspaper. Visuals, graphics, and fonts are just as important in long-form content to engage your audience.
#3 Event Invitations and Follow-Up
Is there any phrase more exciting than “You’re invited”?
Virtual and in-person events are excellent ways to engage future customers. Thanks to their immediacy, B2B marketing emails can significantly boost event turnout. Use visual appeal and crisp language to entice invitees, with features like:
- Personalization – Try to include the recipient company’s name at least once. The subject line is a powerful place to add this personal touch.
- F.O.M.O. – Nobody likes to miss a party. Drop hints that your event has exclusive deals and offerings or incentivize with email coupons if they attend. Positive testimonials from past events can also pique interest.
- CTA – Unlike a card invitation, an email invitation provides an immediate response option. Include a simple CTA link for invitees to sign up or learn more about the event.
- Reminders – Don’t just invite guests once. If a recipient hasn’t responded to your invitation, send follow-up emails. Odds are, you can snag a few more guests through an invitation reminder.
Don’t forget—the follow-up is just as important as the invitation. After a networking event, make sure to send a Thank You email (or even a survey) to both old and new B2B contacts. This will keep your company fresh in your audience’s mind.
#4 Surveys
From order reviews to general questionnaires, audience surveys always give an insightful look at your business—not to mention the fact that they invite participation. The more you can make audiences feel included, the better.
As long as it’s relevant to your audience, surveys can ask almost any question. Some common B2B survey emails cover:
- Order satisfaction
- Customer desires for your business
- Customer demographics and lifestyle
- Competing options for customers
- Brand perception
#5 Exclusive Offers
Urgency is the key to action. By offering clients an exclusive or one-time deal, you give them special access—and that’s an enticing prospect.
Subject lines are your best friends with exclusive offers. While numbers can trigger spam filters, writing a numerical deal (30% off, 2-for-1, etc.) in the subject line will catch eyes. Additionally, you provide exclusive content and boost your expertise by offering industry-related reports or knowledge.
Why Use Email for B2B Marketing?
If you’re on the fence about upping your efforts in your email campaign, it’s essential to take a look at the data.
Compared to its social media counterparts, email might seem like the dinosaur of digital marketing. However, if you understand email list management, email campaigns are one of the most effective ways to reach marketing prospects—especially for B2B companies.
From real estate to software, your business can take advantage of its incredible benefits:
- Expert-approved – About 81% of B2B marketers use email newsletters and 85% use email marketing software.2 Additionally, nearly one-third of B2B marketers said that email newsletters created the most sales leads. Your competition is probably leveraging email, and without it, you risk falling behind.
- Profitable – In 2021, the average ROI (Return on Investment) for marketing emails was $42.3 In addition, your basic email account is free. While you’ll likely need to invest in listserv management software, emails are less financially risky than pay-per-click ads.
- Easy to track – Your marketing is only as good as its feedback. With tracking and analysis software, you can glean important B2B email marketing insights. Reports on open rates, unsubscriber rates, and click-through rates can all shape the best email strategies for your business.
- Direct delivery – Unlike banner ads, emails land directly in front of their recipients. You don’t have to wait around for customers to open a social media app. Even better? B2B marketing emails have high open rates, averaging 21.33% across all industries.4 Personal delivery really does make a difference.
- Instant connection – Emails offer an instant path to more resources on your product or services. Recipients can immediately click on a link to gather more information or make a purchase. For B2B email marketing, the average click-through rate was 2.62%.
B2B Email Marketing Tips
Ready to harness these benefits through one of the five strategies we’ve covered?
Remember that an impactful marketing email is like a work of art. Every word, image, and formatting choice should reinforce your brand and entice the reader. To reach this, you need a clear B2B email marketing strategy that works toward lowering your email bounce rate.
Whether targeting businesses or individuals, all email marketing plans should focus on measurable engagement. Some of the top statistics for this include:
- Open rates – how often recipients open your email
- Click-through rates – how often recipients click on a given link in your email
- Unsubscriber rates – the percentage of recipients that unsubscribe from your emails
- Sales leads – the number of potential sales that stem from email channels
So, how can you boost the sales leads and lower the spam reports? Consider our handy B2B email marketing tips to construct an inbox winner.
Your Brand
If you don’t know yourself, how can others get to know you? Every company needs a recognizable and clear “personality” to attract customers—a.k.a., your brand voice.
Branding should fit your company ethos while appealing to a target audience. Software companies may adopt a clean-cut and factual tone with futuristic images. Social media consultants may prefer a more colorful visage with casual language. With emails, you can convey a consistent brand through factors like:
- Color palettes
- Graphics or images
- Logos
- Fonts
- Writing tone
- Mantras or theme lines
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
No one likes assigned reading. To boost those open and click-through rates, you need relative email content that’s efficient and catchy.
As the first thing people see, subject lines can make the difference between opening and deleting an email. Many recipients respond positively to challenges (Are you ready?), empowering words (Transform Today), and personalization (Your 2022 Goals). As for content, it all depends on the type of email. Newsletters can carry lengthy information, while event invitations should stay short and sweet.
For the most part, it’s wise to stay simple to maintain reader interest.
Segment Your Audience
How you speak to your friends is probably different from how you talk with your grandparents. With B2B email marketing, you need the same kind of audience segmentation.
The more personalized an email targets its recipient’s needs, the better. One email subscriber might be close to making a purchase, while another may not even know of your company. To meet businesses where they’re at, create separate emails for audience segments based on:
- Company position
- Previous interactions with your business
- Lead funnel stage (opportunity, prospect, etc.)
- Industry sector
Add a Call to Action
No B2B marketing email is complete without a call-to-action, or CTA. Otherwise, how will your audience pursue your services?
However, don’t go overboard. The number one mistake is to include multiple CTAs in a single email. This can confuse readers—so much that they may not click at all. Instead, choose one simple and effective CTA to carry recipients onto the next sales lead step, with strong verbs like:
- Start
- Learn
- Discover
- Join
- Save
- Download
- Buy
- Order
Power Digital Marketing—Evolving Your Email Strategy
Instant and affordable, an email marketing service is one of the most effective strategies for B2B companies. However, we know that crafting the perfect email strategy is far from easy. Where to start?
Look no further than Power Digital Marketing.
From survey timing to composition, our experts at our digital marketing agency can strategize your email campaigns for maximum responses. Even better, we can assemble a holistic marketing strategy for your company across all channels—SEO, social media, and more. With PDM, you’re just a few clicks away from business success.
Sources:
- Content Marketing Institute. B2B Content Marketing 2022. https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2021/10/b2b-power-content-marketing-research/
- Content Marketing Institute. B2B Content Marketing 2020. https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2019/10/success-differentiators-b2b-research/
- Oberlo. 10 Email Marketing Stats You Need to Know in 2022. https://www.oberlo.com/blog/email-marketing-statistics
- MailChimp. Email Marketing Benchmarks and Statistics by Industry. https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/
