Tips & Tricks to Email Marketing

Tips & Tricks to Email Marketing

Email marketing can very useful for B2B ecommerce despite the fact that many companies are pulling back on emails in favor of social media. Both are important for today’s ecommerce—just look at the facts. There are twice as many email accounts as there are Facebook and Twitter memberships combined [1].

Email remains the most used method of communications, and emails are expected to grow over 4 percent annually through 2022. Staying away from email campaigns is an error that many companies are making because some emails have become less effective. Many companies just aren’t using emails strategically. However, email marketing can be very effective and inexpensive when used the right way. That means knowing the company's customers and providing B2B-specific email content.

Following email marketing best practices for B2B ecommerce requires strategic planning to reduce annoying and frequent emails in favor of targeted messages aimed at tough-minded buyers.

Statistics Prove Email Marketing Remains Effective

The world has 3.718 billion email users, and Statista predicts there will be 4.258 billion email users by 2022. Email enjoys a high return on investment, or ROI, of 122 percent, which is higher than the ROI of other advertising methods by 400 percent [2]. Savvy companies need to study all the available data to determine which strategies work and which don’t. These data sources include Google Analytics, on-site behavior and customer browsing and buying habits. Optimizing email marketing is important to receive the highest possible ROI, and these email marketing tips can help companies gather information and use it productively:

• Testing the effects of different subject lines
• Using influencers to get people’s attention
• Providing themed newsletters to attract different buyer profiles
• Creating automated loyalty and rewards programs
• Generating high-quality content in marketing messages that provides value to the customer
• Offering incentives such as free shipping, discounts and other inducements

An astonishing 33 percent of people open emails based solely on the subject line, so great thought and planning should go into writing and testing subject lines. Find what type of message works for the company.

These tips only work well if a company’s website can help to manage seamless email campaigns and automated intelligence gathering. integration is the key to successful email campaigns, content management and customer relationship management, or CRM, which can provide a wealth of data about customers to use for targeting specific emails to key customers.

Getting the Most out of B2B Email Marketing

Email marketing best practices for B2B ecommerce include targeting customers based on specific demographic, geographic, seasonal and buying preference data. Restraint is also important--it’s ineffective to inundate leads and customers with too many emails. Important email marketing tips include:

Target Customers Based on Lead Status

• There are many software applications that can qualify sales leads. B2B companies can target leads based on many criteria including open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate and average size of their orders.

Personalize Messages

• Personalizing emails can make them more valuable to customers. That doesn’t mean just addressing customers by name but demonstrating that the company knows the buyer’s needs and order history.

Optimize the Platform for Mobile Devices

• Most customers check their email messages on their phones and quickly delete those that don’t interest them. Messages need to be mobile-optimized to display the most appealing format.

Connect with Social Media

• Companies can include links to social media and make it easy for people to share content with others. These emails can complement social media marketing and improve the results of both types of promotion.

Don’t Use Standard Calls-to-Action

• Sometimes, a simple call-to-action like “Click Now” works, but B2B companies have to attract business-minded buyers. B2B emails can include longer calls-to-action such as reading product research, getting information on the supply chain, downloading a white paper or discovering actionable insights. One study found that 90 percent of companies found that using longer CTAs generated higher conversion rates [3].

Optimizing Your Site for Effective Email Campaigns

The best practices for all types of marketing include web design and integration so that your site can collect all the relevant customer data and automate marketing campaigns based on the criteria that you set. Machine learning is one example of how companies can learn more about customer buying habits by using AI extrapolations. Integrating your system fully might require the help of an experienced developer, but once your platform is integrated, your email campaigns will become more effective with less labor.