Joydeep Bhattacharya
September 3, 2020

Essential B2B Email Marketing Strategies To Generate More Leads

B2B email marketing strategy

B2B email marketing continues to remain one of the best ways to acquire more B2B customers. However, with an increasing number of startups being launched every day for almost every niche, getting more customers is getting difficult.

Every business is adopting essential B2B email marketing strategies to woo its prospects. The number of emails sent and received each day will reach over 347 billion by 2023. With such immense competition, you certainly need a smart email marketing strategy to convert more B2B prospects.

Here are some of the best B2B email marketing strategies to generate more leads:

1. Prepare Brilliant Email Subject Lines 

No matter how useful your email content is, if you don’t prepare a good subject line, nobody will read it. 

Every email subject line should be based on psychology principles because to make humans react, you need to leverage the power of psychology. 

Here are some examples of email subject lines along with the principle they follow:

A. Curiosity Principle

Explanation: 

Humans are naturally curious. You will always see a child doing things that you have asked them not to do. Why? Because they are curious. Hence, we are born curious, and God has made us that way. Marketers rely on this principle of curiosity to sell their products to us. 

Example Email Subject Lines: 

  • This is How I Made $10,000 on My First Webinar
  • The Only Reason Why Frustrated Marketers Use Our Tool
  • Here Are Your Next Steps to 2X Your Income

B. Principle of Social Proof 

Explanation: 

When you go to buy any product, you ask for proof from the salesperson. Why? Because proof gives you confidence that the product is genuine and you can trust it. Similarly, all your B2B customers need proof to trust your services or products. It is best if you offer this trust to your customers in the email subject line itself.

Example Email Subject Lines:

  • 300 New Businesses Joined Us Last Month
  • 6 Reasons Why 6000+ Brands Love Us
  • Thank You, Atlanta Business Owners For Trusting Us

You may also want to read: 6 Top Email Marketing Tools to Nurture Your Audience

C. Personalization Principle

Explanation: 

If you see your name engraved in a handkerchief, what’s your feeling? You feel special and valued. Anything personal fills you with pleasure and gives you extra satisfaction. The personalization principle is leveraged by marketers to generate more sales. 

Example Email Subject Lines: 

  • Joydeep, You Shouldn’t Miss This!
  • Joyce, Can You Give Us A Minute? 
  • James, Are You Free This Weekend?

D. Principle of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

Explanation: 

People don’t want to miss out on things. FOMO is a form of social anxiety that everyone has arising out of fear that they might lose out on a valuable offer while others enjoy it. Marketers use FOMO as an effective marketing technique. 

Example Email Subject Lines: 

  • Only For This Weekend! Save 20% On Our All Services
  • Ends Today! Pay Only 50% And Start Using Our Tool
  • Here is Your Last Chance To Use Our Tool For Free 

E. Principle of Humour 

Explanation: 

Who doesn’t love funny memes, jokes, videos, etc? People are so busy in their life nowadays that they don’t have time to relax and laugh. Imagine that your email lands in the inbox of your prospect at a stressful moment and makes them smile. They will open your emails and are more likely to become your customers. People easily spend more money when they are happy. 

Example Email Subject Lines: 

  • This Tool is For Angry Bosses (Did I Just Say That?)
  • Are You Still Dreaming of Becoming a CEO?
  • This is the Best Joke of the Day (LOL!)

F. Paradox of Choice Principle

Explanation: 

When you offer too many choices to your customers, they often get confused. And the result is, they don’t buy from you. This is why you should always offer your customers limited choices. The paradox of choice is a persuasion marketing technique to get users to take action. 

Example Email Subject Lines:

  • We have Two Options For You: Which One Will You Choose?
  • Why 80% of Our Customers Choose The Starter Bundle 
  • Do You Need An Upgrade? Here Are Your Choices

2. Automate Your Email Marketing Campaign 

Automated email marketing is also known by the name “drip marketing.” Under drip marketing, you send a series of marketing messages to your prospects or customers on a pre-defined schedule. 

An example of a drip campaign is shown in the below image: 

drip emailSource

When you opt for drip email campaigns, you are sure that your customers will continue to receive emails on every action they perform. Imagine, a user signs up for your SaaS software, a welcome email is automatically sent using a set of pre-defined welcome email templates. 

Similarly, when the user completes the trial period, another email is sent with a personalized offer to convert the user into a paying customer. This is the power of automated email campaigns. 

Not every email service offers the same set of benefits or features for running automatic email campaigns. Hence, make sure to compare the top email marketing services before selecting an email provider because you might think they are all the same, but in reality, they aren’t. 

For example, if you are just getting started with email marketing, Mailchimp is a good option because it is the most beginner-friendly. However, if you already have a good list of subscribers and users, you might prefer to go with Active Campaign because they let you send emails based on the user’s actions.

You may also want to read: AI in Email Marketing: A Huge Step Towards Better Emails [Infographic]

3. Deliver Critical Updates On Time

How many times has it happened that you went to buy groceries at a nearby grocery shop to find it closed? You feel frustrated because all your efforts are wasted. 

Your customers might feel the same if they don’t receive critical updates related to your business on time. 

Let me give you an example.

Suppose I have used a particular team management software for the past six months. I have chatted with the customer support executives a couple of times during this period, and everything is going well.

One day, I needed urgent help to fix an issue in my dashboard, and I tried to contact the customer support. But, to my surprise, I found out that the customer executives weren’t available to chat because they were operating on a limited team due to COVID-19. I should have received this critical update via email. 

Instances like these degrade the user experience, and what follows is user frustration and less word-of-mouth marketing. Happy customers are your biggest assets. If they stop recommending your business, your flow of leads is affected. Hence, it is essential to send critical updates to your customers every time before time. 

Email marketing software like Weave has built-in email templates for such critical updates so that you don’t have to prepare a template from scratch. This saves time, and your customers can receive information at the right time. Better email deliverability coupled with brilliant UX forms the base for nurturing loyal customers. 

4. Create a B2B Outreach Email Marketing Strategy

B2B outreach marketing consists of multiple tactics aimed to attract new businesses. 

Reaching out to other businesses is a crucial part of your overall email strategy because it gets you super relevant leads.

Here are the exact steps to follow for B2B outreach marketing:

  • Create your ideal customer persona depending on the type of product sold, the revenue size, and the number of employees. You should know the companies you are looking to target using this strategy.
  • List the daily responsibilities and pain points of the C-suite executives or marketing managers you are looking to target. You should only target people in the organization who have the maximum influence. 
  • Personalize your messaging for every recipient. The message should be clear, relevant, should include the pain points, and should recap any conversation you previously had with the prospect. 
  • Test your emails to use the email copy that converts the best. You can use the help of marketing analytics tools to get the best view of your data.

You may also want to read: How Machine Learning Can Improve Email Marketing

5. Leverage the Power of Re-Engagement Emails 

You only want to have genuine prospects in your target email list. To do that, you have the leverage the power of re-engagement emails. 

Around 22.5% of users in the email list never engage with the brand. This is called ‘database decay’ and should be avoided if you want to generate a constant flow of leads, new customers, and revenue.

Re-engagement emails help keep only those prospects or users on your list who are actively engaging with your brand.

This email from Grammarly is an excellent example of re-engagement email in action:

Grammarly sends this email to all inactive subscribers. People in the email list of Grammarly but haven’t used their software in a while. This email is a push on for all such users to bring them back to the site and start using the software again. 

Conclusion 

Email remains the preferred channel of marketing for B2B marketers. The five strategies discussed in this article can help you acquire more leads not only from new prospects but also from your existing customers. Which strategy do you find useful, and why? Please let me know in the comments below.

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Joydeep Bhattacharya

Joydeep Bhattacharya is the author of the SEO Sandwitch Blog where he shares his latest tips and tutorials to learn SEO and Digital Marketing. He is a regular contributor to publications like SEMrush, Search Engine Watch, Smartinsights, ClickZ, and many others.