Inboxes are crowded, email subscribers are overwhelmed…yet marketing emails remain one of the top channels for conversions and sales.
Granted, this means that your ability to stand out is crucial for capturing and retaining the attention of your subscribers. For B2B marketing, especially, list fatigue hits hard.
In fact, it’s estimated that 67% of B2B buyers and consumers set up a junk email address to avoid the overwhelm that comes with an inbox full of unwanted emails. (Gartner).
To avoid being that business, here are a few ways that you can create a more effective B2B email marketing strategy that makes an impact.
B2B email marketing is a strategic approach to digital marketing that focuses on sending targeted and personalized emails to potential customers within the business-to-business (B2B) sector.
Unlike B2C email marketing, which targets individual consumers, B2B email marketing focuses on building relationships, generating leads, and driving sales with businesses and decision-makers. The content often focuses on providing in-depth insights, industry trends, and solutions to business challenges.
B2B email marketing is a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. First and foremost, it gives you a cost-effective and measurable way to nurture leads and improve conversion rates, ultimately driving business growth.
It also gives you the opportunity to increase brand awareness and credibility within your industry. By consistently delivering valuable content, you can position your business as a thought leader and build trust with your audience.
Finally, with an established publishing platform, you open the door to additional revenue opportunities through sponsorships, joint ventures, and more.
Far too often, personalization tactics are reduced to using merge fields in email copy. While adding a recipient’s first name to the subject line might help with open rates (it’s worth a try), you can dive much deeper to ensure that every email is timely and relevant for your subscribers.
Tools that can help to organize this information and make it accessible include:
To start with, ensure that your contacts are properly segmented into groups or lists based on interests, interactions, or other known behaviors. This allows you to tailor messaging that feels personalized, even at scale.
By organizing your contact lists based on factors like industry, company size, or where someone is in the sales funnel, you can send more relevant content in every email, improving open rates and conversion opportunities.
Here are some ways to segment:
The quickest unsubscribes for me are the ones when every email feels like a sales pitch. Instead, offer value by sharing insights, resources, and solutions that solve real problems for your subscribers.
For example, as a marketer, one of my favorite email newsletters comes from Semrush, an SEO tool, where I can always count on getting insight into the latest strategies and how-to articles to help me get my job done quicker.
To increase value, you could incorporate content like:
Occasional special offers—like free trials, discounts, or downloadable content—can be a powerful motivator for engagement.
This tactic can be used during welcome/onboarding flows (which are crucial for creating a positive first impression and establishing a relationship with your brand), as well as in your regular email newsletter cadence.
(Note: include existing clients when planning your offers for additional support reducing customer churn and increased satisfaction with your brand or product.)
Your subject line is the first (and sometimes only) chance to grab attention. With nearly half of email recipients deciding to open based on the subject line alone, it’s worth experimenting with different approaches. Consider:
(Need help with subject lines? Tools like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer and Omnisend’s Subject Line Tester are great resources to start with.)
Not every email needs to push a sale. Build trust by delivering helpful, relevant content before introducing a sales pitch. One approach is to send a series of emails that provide value—like educational content or resources—before transitioning to a more sales-focused message.
At FeedOtter, for example, we focus on delivering valuable information and helping users achieve success during their free trial. The call to action pitch comes later, alongside an invitation to connect with our team to get their questions answered.
While the “too many emails” is typically a complaint associated with B2C or ecommerce brands, B2B companies should remain aware of how email send frequency affect the overall engagement and unsubscribe rates.
Starting with your drip campaigns, you’ll want to establish consistency and a habit of high-value content, without overwhelming your audience.
Top publishing companies often include an option for subscribers to choose their email frequency—such as weekly or monthly digests—to further improve your email marketing engagement. (As a bonus, you also get more data on subscriber preferences that you can use when planning out additional content.)
When writing your marketing emails, it’s important to keep in mind that you’re writing to actual people. Many B2B brands sound formal and robotic, making it feel like a chore to read through (even when the information in on point). You want your emails to be friendly and conversational in order to appeal to your contacts.
You can do things like use their first names in your emails and add a CTA to the end of the emails inviting them to reply to the emails if they have any questions for you. Inviting your contacts to reply with questions makes them feel like they can have an actual conversation with you and keeps them more engaged.
Sending out blog digest emails can feel like an exorbitant waste of time, even if your data shows that they remain one of the most engaged-with email types.
Top publishing companies use tools like FeedOtter to automate building and sending content-rich emails, helping you deliver well-designed, customized blog digests with minimal effort.
If you’re not A/B testing your emails, you’re missing out on valuable insights that can nudge your email success metrics up over time. Some ideas of things to test include:
Some of these can be tested in the subject line to improve open rates, others might show up in the body of the email, to improve click through rates.
Over time, you’ll uncover what drives engagement and can use those insights to continually refine your strategy.
A well-crafted email marketing strategy is the cornerstone of successful B2B email marketing campaigns. While the above tips are timelessly relevant for helping to build brand awareness and attract new subscribers, they presuppose that you have the fundamentals already established.
Here are the essential steps to build a strong foundation:
Email marketing remains a highly effective way to engage with B2B leads and clients—when done right.
Always test, review data, and iterate on your email marketing strategies to ensure that your content stays on the cutting edge of your industry.
By focusing on personalization, providing real value, and strategically timing your sales pitches, you can create engaging emails that nurture and convert your audience.
