B2B Email marketing best practices

6 simple techniques to build business relationships through email marketing

Even though email marketing continues to be a core business-to-business (B2B) communication for sales and marketing teams, the market continues to grow from a solely email marketing approach to that of integrated marketing communication.

Rather than using email as a means in which to provide one-way communication the goal is provide marketers with the ability to track, build relationships and manage digital campaigns whilst monitoring a flow of leads - known as Marketing Automation.

Successful marketing automation campaigns consist of three core elements:

• 1. Email marketing
• 2. Lead generation
• 3. An effective marketing database.

In this article we're going to look at some basic techniques to build B2B relationships through email. Join our free B2B Email marketing webcast for more details and examples.

Best Practice techniques and factors which are important for improving your B2B email marketing:

•  1. The 'From' field

The 'from' field represents a particularly important aspect of personal B2B email marketing send, since this field provides the first aspect of communication between company and customer and is the first point of call when people are deciding whether to open or delete an email.

The from field also provides a means for a spam filter to detect whether the email is from a spammer or from a trusted source, from fields containing lines such sales@, marketing@ or info@ are headed straight for the junk folder.

The relationship you have built up with your customer should not be negated by the fact that you use a general from field to make contact, if the customer has an Account Manager who they have built a rapport with, use their name to head the email in order to see higher open rates.

The way you choose to contact your customers need to be consistent, if there’s a different name week in week out then there is less chance of the recipient marking the email as safe and more chance of ending up in the dreaded junk folder.

• 2. The Subject line 

If we imagine that an email is a letter then the subject line by proxy will be the envelope; the barrier between the receiver and the email content beyond. Statistically people will decided within 2 seconds whether an email is worth reading.

With this in mind, subject lines must be short, snappy and provide the reader with an incentive to open. It is therefore important that your subject line is not only engaging but relevant. Subject lines filled with personalisation can be an advantage but only if this relates the overall tone of the email you are sending.

Alternatively, why not give your subject line a personal touch; a simple technique but can create a targeted approach which may be the difference between engagement and the trash can! Just remember use plain language avoid the dreading ‘at’, ‘a’ and ‘the’ and try to get to the point in 10 words or less!

•  3. Preview Pane

Most companies header an email with a nice banner, using an image to portray company branding and logo, but this wastes the precious first six lines of their email.

This vital real estate is your first opportunity to grab the reader’s attention and encourage them to open the email in full.

The first six lines of your email are what can be seen in the preview pane meaning this is what is on show when a client has decided to read past the subject line, filling this area with an image means that this space will be wasted with a big white box featuring a red cross in the corner portraying little or nothing of use to the reader and discouraging further investigation.

You need these six lines to pack a punch, to be meaningful, don’t put the ‘open in browser’ button or the ‘unsubscribe here’ as they are not beneficial to you and are as easily placed at the end of the email.

• 4. Dynamic Content

Effectively dynamic content will double the clickthrough rate of any well implemented campaign.

Dynamic content is a targeted approach ensuring prospects, leads or customers receive information of interest based on the behaviours they display.

Marketing can implement this by allowing their customers to build up a score based on individuals clicking on a certain interest point within the email sent. This can be used as an overall score to obtain whether the receiver is a ‘hot lead’ or can be used as a ‘rule’ for the receiver to receive the next email with one or several campaign series.

•  5. Styling

Spam scores are an important factor for a B2B email marketer, a spam score over 4.5 means your email isn't going to reach your desired target and will be relegated to junk.

Certain terms such as; Dear with a score of 1.6 and Click Here with 1.0, immediately ring alarm bells on a spam filter racking up a substantial score immediately off of a single word or phrase.

In many emails these words appear several times, unsubscribe and view in browser phrases that also equate to a high score are often accompanied with ‘click here’ even though it is likely the recipient is aware of the action required, and a blue link such as used by Google is a far more effective way of alerting the user that a link is there and that it is to be clicked.

Large font is also seen as high scorer on the spam filter as it is seen as shouting, a negative feature in an email, the same applies for a red link which equates an equally high score.

•  6. Data Cleansing

There is no point sending copious amounts of emails if they are not going to the correct people. Therefore it is important that your data is relevant and up to date.

Try surveys or web capture forms as a way of updating information and discovering the preferences of prospects, customers or lead. This information can then be written back to your CRM to provide your sales and marketing team with key pieces of information in which a relationship can be build.

The main purpose of marketing automation is to create both a targeted and timely approach to email marketing to allow the sales and marketing team to curate relationships.

However to ensure you get the most out of automating your emails, it is vital that best practice and quality data is in place to optimise open rates, click throughs and lead generation. When integrated with a CRM system, marketing automation takes on a whole new level.

Many aspects of your data can be targeted to create select campaigns, whether you wish to base your sends on a customer’s postcode or lead score this can all be possible through your integration. Marketing automation allows you to be organised and structured setting up campaigns in advance to be sent on a specific date or time, but also to be proactive in responding to leads or clients’ actions through follow-up emails based on interaction with a campaign or web page.

For more information on email marketing automation and to receive a demonstration and trial, visit the CommuniGator website or call us on 01483 411 911. You can download our whitepaper on email marketing, which looks at the tips and tricks for designing better emails and ensuring your email lives in the Inbox for longer than 2 seconds!.

Also, read our whitepaper on Generating Leads while you sleep If you're involved in B2B Marketing this is a must read. It talks about ways to generate and track leads with automated processes and flows so that you can save time and make your website and email work harder while you are sleeping.

Thank you to Hannah Wallis and Rhiannon Jones for sharing their opinions and views in this blog post. You can connect on LinkedIn with Hannah and Rhiannon.