12 Best B2B Email Marketing Strategies to Boost Sales

Unlike B2C customers, B2B customers look for brand credibility, benefits, value propositions, features of products/services, and a positive ROI. Hence, B2B email marketing must leverage tailored strategies to align with your B2B client’s objectives and provide them exactly what they want. The buying process in B2B transactions involves multiple stakeholders’ decisions and is more complex, calling for a specified approach.

73% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel for contacting prospects.

77% of B2B customers say that email is their top choice for communication. That tells us how email is highly effective in delivering timely, concise, and clear-cut messages that cater to B2B buyers’ needs.

In this post, we’ll see 12 Innovative B2B Email Marketing Ideas you can use to build long-term B2B relationships and boost sales:

12 Best B2B Email Marketing Strategies to foster Long-term B2B Relationships

B2B Email Marketing must leverage a targeted approach to distribute relevant content based on the recipient’s industry, company size, purchase history, and job title. This content generally includes case studies, industry insights, data-driven analysis, new product/service feature updates, new trends, etc. to signify brand credibility and expertise.

B2B marketers simply must take advantage of the sales opportunities email marketing explores.

Here are some of the best email marketing tactics to use to nurture your B2B prospects for a long period:

1. Welcome Emails: First Impression Speaks Volumes

Welcome emails are imperative as they are the starting point of your interaction with your clients and a great opportunity to make a good first impression.

It often has high open rates, so make sure to craft these emails with personalized subject lines, a compelling introduction to your brand, the next process (if any), exciting offers or lead magnets you may have in-store, upcoming events to look forward to, available newsletters, etc.

This provides a solid foundation to nurture your interactions with new leads and build long-lasting B2B relationships.

B2B welcome or onboarding emails often include the following type of content:

• Welcome note or notification of successful sign-up
• Overview of what value your business offers
• How to get started with a product/service
• Important links to privacy policy, guides, or demos
• Helpful tips
• Product/service features or benefits
• Social media buttons
• Discounts, offers, or lead magnets for new subscribers

If done right, B2B welcome emails are a good start to push the B2B clients further down the sales funnel, boost engagement, and reduce churn rate.

2. Business Updates/Announcements

Any huge milestone, product update, latest service offering, new feature, limited edition product, or other key achievements directly affect your customers, especially B2B ones. Hence, they would want to know what is happening in your company.

A frequent newsletter or an update/announcement email adds to your brand’s credibility and recognition, helping you gain your client’s trust, and instil excitement in them.

Make sure to add a compelling, clear, and concise CTA in the email, so the subscribers can easily take the required action.

Source: Porch Group Media

3. Upcoming Event Invitations: “Join Our Webinar: Learn from Industry Leaders”

A creative email that promotes an event, online sessions, webinars, or virtual workshops are simple yet effective ways to entice recipients, based on their pain points or needs.

Add a touch of personalization by using phrases like:

• “You Are Invited to (event name)”
• “This is an Exclusive Invite From (your company name)”
• “We look forward to seeing you on (event date) for (event name)” 

Such personalized messages make your subscribers feel valued and encourage them to participate in your events or webinars. Create a sense of urgency by limiting the time to sign up for the event.

Likewise, you can use emails to collect feedback for the events and share a recap or recording of webinars so your subscribers can catch up to whatever they have missed off the valuable content.

4. Educational Emails: “Learn How (product) Can Help You Grow Your Business”

B2B buyers prefer in-depth information, LTV, valuable resources, and relevance over emotional or salesy language.

When creating B2B marketing emails, provide detailed information such as how-to guides, tutorials, product/service demos, webinar recordings, podcasts, reports on new trends, or other educational pieces that offer them valuable insights. This will heavily influence their decisions and help them get quicker approvals from stakeholders.

5. Personalized Offers: “Last Chance (Offer) Expires Tomorrow”

Emails with personalized offers and discounts are crafted based on criteria such as recent activity, recent purchases, or other triggers. Such an email pinpoints all the benefits a subscriber may get through these incentives and often has a CTA button, thus persuading them to take the necessary action.

Email personalization helps businesses with:

• Speeding up the buying process
• Pushing B2B clients to convert, i.e., schedule a call, take a free trial, register for an event, etc.
• Drive customer engagement and retention
• Increase sales and revenue

6. Case Studies: “See How (Brand)’s Sales Skyrocketed”

Sharing real-life case studies in your emails is a great way to prove your industry expertise and demonstrate your product/service in action. This helps your B2B buyers understand how your product/service resolves the challenges or pain points of your customers and how it impacts the industry.

Case studies are often detailed and long-format, and they signify your company’s potential and the value you provide to them.

7. White Papers: “Discover Best Practices for (Problem and your Solution)”

Whitepapers are again popular email marketing content, especially for B2B clients. These long-format, high-value papers showcase your industry knowledge on various solutions, new trends, reports, etc. to establish dominance and prove how your company is up to date, even with the complex topics.

8. Survey Emails: “Tell Us What You Think!”

Survey emails help you gather feedback and understand your customers’ experiences and perceptions about our brand. Use this feedback to enhance your products/services, deliver better UX, segment audiences, and personalize your marketing efforts.

Survey emails must be sent at a critical point in the sales journey to encourage the right actions at the right time, such as right after a free trial ends or after a webinar or virtual workshops.

9. Exclusive Content: “Exclusive Content Awaits Inside”

To achieve a competitive edge in the market, businesses must have profound knowledge of the industry topics, trends, tools, and technologies. Assert authority and showcase your expertise through emails with exclusive content, insights, comprehensive reports, guides, or studies.

Strategically disseminate such content throughout the email and provide exclusive access to your B2B clients. Further, you can segment the subscribers based on their interests and send them targeted emails to suit their needs.

10. Re-engagement Emails: “We Miss Working with You”

Some inactive subscribers may not open, engage, or respond to your emails. That is where B2B re-engagement emails will help you re-ignite these users to start interacting with your brand again.

These emails may include the following content:

• Incentives, offers, discounts, coupons, or exclusive content to spark interest in them with clear CTA
• Sense of Urgency telling them they may lose access to certain features/benefits if they do not act with a clear CTA
• A friendly farewell email if they do not respond, with a re-subscribe link so they can join back if they want

11. Cross-Promotion Emails: “Check This Out Too”

B2B cross-promotion emails may include links to your company website, articles, blogs, YouTube channels, other product/service pages, social media channels, etc., so your B2B clients can explore more about your brand.

These emails boost user engagement, drive traffic to your multiple resources, educate the clients about the value your brand has to offer and strengthen customer relationships.

12. Tips and Tricks Email

Email marketing does not end with a purchase. You need to nurture your prospects post-sales to boost customer retention and satisfaction.

Send practical tips and tricks on how to unlock the full potential of a product/service, showcase new products, regular announcements, etc. will help you remain on top of your B2B clients’ minds.

Conclusion

In this hyper-competitive landscape, it can get overwhelming to make your way past all the clutter in your clients’ email inbox.

Understanding your B2B audience, identifying their challenges/needs, and designing strategies that cater to exactly what they want are pivotal factors here.

We at Ignitiv Digital, have the proven expertise and unmatched skills to guide you through your B2B email marketing journey. We curate strategic marketing campaigns and compelling CTAs and leverage effective tools and A/B testing to help you thrive in this digital era.

Want to know more? Get in touch with us!

Not just tips and tricks, you may also provide complete courses/tutorials to your clients to provide them with a competitive edge in the industry and hone their skills.