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When we talk of the marketing strategies, email marketing tops the list because it is one of the most widely used marketing strategies in the B2B world. Statistics indicate that 86% of businesses plan to increase their email marketing budgets. This means that email marketing is here to stay and it’s only becoming bigger in the coming years as the marketers learn from the previous campaigns and fine-tune their email marketing tactics.
In this article, we will discuss how B2B email campaigns can be improved in 2021 using the important B2B marketing lessons.
Lesson 1: Empathy and Human Connection Makes your Message Stand Out
As we collectively navigated the Covid-19 crisis, marketers learned the importance of displaying empathy while effectively getting their message across. Whether communicating company updates or sending order confirmation emails, they used several types of email marketing campaigns but empathy and other human values were an integral part of their email messages. Instead of just selling, the focus was shifted to making the audience feel good and supported. Enhancing customer experience from afar was a challenge for the marketers. Automation was largely used by the marketers as email marketing automation could improve customer experience.
It was increasingly realized by the marketers that displaying human values of care and compassion while promoting a product or service was the right way to communicate with the customers and earn their trust, just like Dagne Dover did in their email campaign announcing their new collection.
Source: Dagne Dover
Lesson 2: How Frequently you Send your Emails Matters
Customers are being bombarded with promotional emails every day. 35% of marketers agreed on sending 2-3 emails per month as per Direct Marketing Association’s National Client Email report. So, it’s easier for your emails to get lost in the sea of messages. The key to standing out among the rest is to offer relevant content. Relevant content leads to better open rates and CTR. Therefore, email only when you have something relevant to share. When you are adding value to your subscriber’s life, whether by offering great content or a discount send the emails frequently. If your email message doesn’t offer any value, don’t send the email – it’s that simple.
Lesson 3: Unsubscribes Don’t Necessarily Mean Failure
On the surface, you may consider email unsubscribes as a setback to your B2B email campaigns but that’s not necessarily true. You can use unsubscribes to better your email marketing in the following ways. There’s always a reason why someone opted out of your email list. Some reasons include:
- Sending too many messages.
- Irrelevant messages
- Subscribers are no longer interested
Source: Denishammer
No matter what the reason for unsubscribing, you can ask your subscribers why they chose to stop receiving emails. You can then use that information to improve your email marketing strategies. Make sure to make unsubscribing easier for your subscribers. You can also offer to update their email preferences if you found out that they only want emails about certain topics.
Lesson 4: Relevancy of the Content Matters
Now that we have touched on the issue of subscribers opting out of an email list, it is important to mention that irrelevant content is the second most common reason for people unsubscribing from marketing emails.
That said, businesses must know that B2B email marketing is not about the platform or the sending technology; it’s about the subscribers who consented to receive your email. Therefore, focus on making the email content as relevant and valuable to your subscribers as possible.
Lesson 5: Integration of Email Marketing with other Channels is Important
One tip that tops the list of all the B2B email marketing tips is to integrate all the channels with your email marketing efforts. The content you choose for the email should be part of all your marketing channels. It is important to understand that email campaigns alone cannot drive all conversions. Therefore incorporate similar messaging points in all your channels, such as- social media, paid media, and event strategy. No matter what channels you use, they all must be aligned with the marketing funnel to achieve the maximum impact.
Lesson 6: Subject Lines can Make or Break your Marketing Campaigns
Of all the important email marketing lessons, this is a lesson that needs to be remembered by marketers, whether beginner or expert. Email subject lines do the job of creating the first impression on the email recipients; therefore, make sure you use the right combination of words to prompt the recipients to open and read your email.
Here are some statistics (Source: Capaignmonitor) that highlight the importance of subject lines for B2B email campaigns:
- 69% of emails are reported as spam based on their subject lines.
- 47% of people open the emails by reading their subject lines.
- Emails with personalized subject lines are 22% more likely to be opened by the recipients.
The best subject lines are short, sweet, and concise, piques the interest of the recipients, and communicate the promise of value. Make sure, your subject line has all these attributes.
Wrap Up
B2B Email Marketing will continue to be a core part of the marketer’s toolkit in 2021 and beyond but as consumer behavior continues to change, the key to successfully growing as a B2B business will be to learn from the changing email marketing trends and using that knowledge to boost campaign performance.
