Email is the most effective channel for marketers to have an effective link with their target audience. The main benefit of B2B email marketing is that it not only guarantees a high return on investment but also helps you engage with your customers actively.
Email marketing is a reliable technique to boost business for B2B businesses like hotels, retails, F&B sectors, e-commerce, web development, software services and others. The following are the top three reasons why they love it like they do:
One key benefit of using emails for B2B marketing is that it helps you to deliver customised messages based on the unique needs of your clients. Customisation helps you to carefully segment your target audience based on a specific buyer persona which can incite a greater response.
Marketing through emails helps you to focus on building a personal relationship with companies. When compared to other forms of digital marketing, you are not interrupting the busy schedules or invading into their personal space. B2B email marketing helps you to maintain strong ties and retain the relationship with your customers for a long time.
If you have a limited budget for your B2B campaigns, email marketing helps to save your advertising budget. You can not only gain the advantage of achieving a higher ROI (Return Of Investment) but also the benefit of a product marketing campaign.
Following are some awe-inspiring examples from some popular B2B companies that you can use for inspiration when planning your own campaign.
Welcome emails tend to use the formula of creating an excellent first impression to build a relationship with the customers.
This is the first email that you send to your new users, subscribers or customers. Welcome emails give a fantastic opportunity to let them know more about you.
Research has shown that welcome emails enjoy 5 times the clickthrough rate and 4 times open rate when compared to a standard email campaign.
Cultivating a healthy, positive relationship with your customer helps with retention, and gives them a reason to stay subscribed to your newsletters.
Source: Downhall
Transactional emails are often sent to the customers after they start an action on the retail website.
Source: Jack Wills
It could be anything from online receipt to purchase confirmation. Another good example is the abandoned cart email which has the potential to gain lots of clients.
Marketing emails which inform the users about local events will help them to have a significant impact on your B2B sales.
Source: Jack Wills
The service email from Asana is another notable example of B2B email marketing. The company encourages people to get control over the to-do list by inviting clients to try out their project management platform.
The following example shows that the B2B email can be part of either re-activation email or welcome email.
Source: Asana
With B2B email marketing, you can introduce an entirely new product or announce the launch of some new features in an old product. This type of marketing enables you to keep a firm brand name. Let us take the example of Grammarly, the popular grammar checking tool.
Source: Grammarly
The company highlights its new capabilities and features through a clear cut and informative illustration.
Many of the new features are broken down and displayed in the header illustration. The bulleted list helps to catch the viewer attention and avoid any visual clutter.
While designing emails, make sure that you include lots of beautiful imagery to catch the attention of your users. This is what the Kimpton group of hotels and restaurants did.
Source: Kimpton
Clients who are on the lookout for great hotels to book for their guests will be impressed if you include stunning visuals in your emails.
Sending an end of the year email will be a great idea to keep your customers stick on to your products and services.
Through this email, you will be able to give a synopsis of your achievements in the year. If done correctly, it can make an impression in the minds of the viewers.
One fitting example is the end of the year email list from Meltwater. They have ingeniously crafted their email to highlight the company's accomplishments and achievements during the year.
Source: Meltwater
The email also has various links to its tools that help the clients for their end of the year reporting.
Although this format is quite popular in the B2C sector, B2B organisations can make use of this format to effectively communicate with their clients.
One fine example is the marketing email from Litmus. They use a GIF to add a pinch of extra excitement to advertise about their widespread product Litmus Scope, which lets the users create a web version of their email.
Source: litmus
The product also allows mobile and desktop previews, with shareable emails.
Studies have shown that 55% of guests are ready to trade personal information in exchange for personal details. Clients these days are looking for personalised and relevant offers rather than receiving a bunch of emails.
Click and Go decided to send marketing emails to their clients which incites curiosity and sharing some rare and interesting facts.
Source: sendpulse
Freelancer uses this B2B email to their corporate clients. The mail is simple and easy to understand.
Source: freelancer
The creators crafted it specifically to make sure that all the essential services that they can offer are highlighted and easy to understand.
The email shows the depth of services that they can offer and their ability to post a project for free drives interest.
Studies have shown that more than 40 percent of your email list is inactive. Just imagine the limitless possibilities you will have if you can interactively re-engage with your audience.
Source: impactbnd
The re-engagement email from Sidekick is a perfect example of how you can earn reconvert audiences who have not been interacting with your content as often. This email provides an excellent opportunity for restarting the conversation with your users.
If you added a new product feature, you can announce the news to your existing clients through an email having product upgrade details.
Keep the email engaging and simple enough to make sure that you will not overcrowd it with details of too many features.
In the example below the company mentions its product update feature through a simple graphic illustration.
Source: sendlane
Sending a regular newsletter via email will help drive up the value of your company.
Email newsletters come in handy, especially for B2B marketing where subscribers will not be interested in engaging with your email without meaningful and exciting content to catch their eye.
Source: mailerlite
Yesler's email newsletter is a perfect example of how email newsletters should be. The simple one-column design helps to grab the viewer's attention.
Shopify has done an excellent job including several different topics in a single email which naturally blends into a simgple and cool design. The email does everything from highlighting their solutions to sharing stories and asking for business.
Source: mailerlite
The whole idea of Shopify’s email is to bring up innovative solutions to help businesses sell their products on their platform.
Moo, a B2B company that sells business cards successfully uses decorated animated GIF emails to grab the attention of its customers.
Source: moo
This Is an excellent idea for companies focusing on B2B email marketing.
It can be challenging for businesses looking for new B2B clients, especially with the huge costs associated with new client acquisition.
Sending an email with video or voice messages offer a great creative solution to get new clients.
The following is an excellent example of a video email. The Founder of Backlinko Brian Dean, sent out a video email to connect deeply with his clients.
Source: backlinko
The person who delivers the message speaks as if he is directly addressing the viewer.
Companies with B2B services can use emails to remind their clients about essential information, services that they offer or useful statistics about the users themselves.
The following email is an excellent example of how you could use an email to remind your clients to check their credit scores. The creators designed this email with minimal content and great graphics to synchronise with the subject of the email correctly.
Source: sendlane
Relationship building is a crucial step when it comes to keeping your clients.
eROI's "Dare To Be Kind" marketing email focuses more on creating a deep relationship with your clients.
Source: zenmedia
Here more stress is given to branding than on sales. Through this email, the company reminds its clients to join them in the movement for creating emails that are diligent, kinder, and filled with more splendid inspiration.
When it comes to B2B email marketing, the better segmented is your email list, the better chance of success. Ask your customers what their preferences are and create an email pool where you could include all the email lists based on a particular choice.
Source: outrigger
The following is an excellent example of an email where the users can update their unique preferences.
The following example is from Mutual of Omaha, which is a perfect example of how these emails should be designed.
The prime focus of this email is to promote the blogs of the company.
Source: mailbakery
This simple strategy can be helpful if done correctly; the creators have carefully chosen the style, wording, design, and images to make sure to make an impact on the readers.
In recent years, the market environment is undergoing a paradigm shift in the way people sell or market their products. The change is significant in the case of B2B businesses due to the inherent nature of the company.
To have success in such a highly competitive environment, you need to redefine your marketing skills. You can take inspiration from these B2B email marketing examples to gain a significant advantage over your competitors.