Email marketing is crucial for every B2B company. Not only is email marketing a good way to let your audience know about your product, but reviewing your engagement helps ensure you’re sending out strong, effective emails. Running a successful email campaign takes the right formula of B2B marketing tactics and content—and for the most up-to-date tips on just how to proceed, we received some recent advice from one of our fellow marketing colleagues.
Marketing professional Jay Schwedelson—president and CEO of Worldata, and founder of SubjectLine.com—spoke at HubSpot’s INBOUND 2022 conference to share new B2B email marketing best practices. From increasing your email open rates with a few easy tweaks to getting more responses on your email offers, these notes from Schwedelson’s session, coupled with our email expertise as a Platinum HubSpot Agency Partner, will help you drive strong email marketing for your business.
Use these seven best practices to craft a resilient B2B email marketing strategy.
1. Use GIFs in Your Messages
Whether you pronounce it “GIF” or “JIF,” the animations are engaging for your audience. B2B marketing emails that included GIFs had 34% higher click-through rates. If you can find a GIF that fits in with your message, use it in your email.
2. Try Segmented Campaigns
Sending a campaign to a segmented list, instead of to every marketing contact you have, increases your chance of the message going to a receptive customer, which in turn increases your chances of selling to them.
So, which segmented campaign should you try first? Messages grouped by new subscribers, product life stages, and your top 1% of clients are likely to be successful, as are birthday emails. For certain audiences, you can have success segmenting emails by buyer persona. Stay away from sending messages due to a change in engagement or inactivity—those don’t tend to perform well.
3. Focus on New Subscribers
You may give more thought to what your previous customers want from your email campaigns than what will interest your new subscribers, but statistics show you shouldn’t ignore new recipients of your email blasts. The first email you send to a new subscriber is 85% more likely to stay in that person’s inbox, meaning a higher chance of engagement with your business every time they check their email and see your message again.
4. Send Celebration Emails
Everyone loves a good party, and your customers are no different. They want to celebrate! Help them out, and remind them of your company at the same time, by sending them emails to celebrate their milestones—and enjoy a 21% higher open rate on B2B emails when you do. Birthdays, client-relationship anniversaries, and more are all fair game.
5. Write Personal Subject Lines
No one wants to get emails that feel like spam—you can avoid this by using personalization and personality in your subject lines. Include first names for your customers to grab their attention, and use emojis when appropriate to set yourself apart from the crowd.
In terms of word choice, be intentional with your writing. The word “tomorrow” led to 28% higher open rates over the specific day of the week, and “free” was twice as likely to be opened as “complementary.”
6. Time Your Emails Carefully
Over 80% of all email campaigns are sent out on the hour, so if you send your email then, you’re competing with a lot of other messages and yours may just get lost in the crowd. B2B email campaigns that aren’t sent exactly on the hour have up to a 15% higher open rate. However, keep it close to the hour when you do send your message, because 70% of all email traffic occurs within 10 minutes of the hour.
7. Don’t Wait to Re-Engage
Okay, so you’ve sent out a B2B email campaign—great! When it’s time to send a re-engagement campaign, don’t wait too long and miss out on the momentum you generated from the first campaign. Start looking to send out your re-engagement campaign after 30 days.
📈 Highest-Performing Email Offers
When setting up your campaign, keep in mind that these subjects tend to perform best for B2B marketers by click-through percentage:
- Content for 2023 – 29% increase
- Lists and checklists – 28% increase
- Free guides and reports – 22% increase
- On-demand videos – 21% increase
- Including the words “Watch Now” in the subject line of emails linking to videos increases open rates by 34%
📉 Lowest-Performing Email Offers
While it can still be worth it to send these types of messages, these email offers for B2B marketers tend to receive a lower click-through percentage:
- eBooks – 24% decrease
- Webinars – 19% decrease
- Whitepapers – 22% decrease
- Infographics – 16% decrease
While statistics can only go so far, knowing current B2B email best practices will help your company use this valuable tool more effectively in your marketing strategy. Keep these latest tactics and techniques in mind as you craft your next email marketing campaign, and remember to always consider your audience when choosing your words, your email timing, and your topics. Like any marketing strategy, you’ll need to analyze your results and adjust over time, but these best practices should help you find and nurture B2B leads for your company.
Need a hand with your next B2B email marketing campaign? Get in touch with us today to see how Sagefrog can put our B2B marketing skills to work for you. We have a comprehensive understanding of B2B markets and business dynamics, so we know how to build and improve on your email marketing strategy. Check out our portfolio of work in B2B industries, including healthcare, technology, manufacturing, and business services.
