Email marketing is an extremely effective marketing medium in B2B business scenarios. Unlike consumer marketing where customers are innumerable, customers are easily identified and limited in any B2B. Since the number of people to be addressed is limited, and contact details obtained relatively easily, Email marketing can be leveraged with potent benefits to the organization.
In B2B Email marketing the fundamental principles of marketing continue to be relevant. It definitely pays off to spend some time thinking,formulating and documenting a email marketing strategy prior to initiating any customer communication.
Who is the customer?
The first step is to map the entire purchase process of the customer. Mapping reveals the user, influencers, opinion leaders, decision makers and likely decision breakers too. They are likely to come from different departments of the organization: Users department, Procurement, Finance, Senior management (depending on deal size). Each of them has a role to play in making the purchase, and each of them needs to be marketed to.
Email Marketing campaigns sometime need to be customized for each of the participants of the purchase process. Not every person in the decision making process would be a potential recipient for the same email marketing campaign. For example, while the CEO of an organization could be one making the final sign-off on a high value sale, its unlikely that the CEO would like to receive periodical product catalogues from you (indispensable for procurement). However the CEO needs to be aware of your business. Depending on the nature of your business and the size of the customer organization, you could definitely get the attention of the CEO with a specially addressed email annually or semi-annually.
Messaging Senior Management:
- Launch of a new product/service
- Launch of a new product/service Invites to special events that you could be hosting Seasonal greetings
- Any Industry news that you possess and could be of business interest to the CEO/Top management
Messaging Users, Procurement, and Technical evaluators:
You must look at addressing the Procurement, Users and technical personnel on at frequent time intervals. These people initiate the purchase, are present through all the critical decision points of the purchase process, and most often have veto power to negative a supplier. They are very important people and Email marketing needs to ensure that your business is top of mind and viewed favorably in their minds. Regular communications addressing details of new products or services added to your business, technical features, special promotions, discounts could be your subjects – staying top of mind, and at the same time educating. Subjects for addressing procurement professionals could be:
- Your product/Services catalogue (at the same frequency that you update it)
- Deals and promotions that you may be offering
- Advance information about price hikes that you anticipate
- Technical information about your products or services (If you are a dealer/distributor, this may not be of much interest since this information may be funneled directly by the manufacturer)
- Invitations to any special events (Seminars/Product launches) that you are organizing
- Information about any training programs on your products
- New products or services launches
- Intimation of price changes (advance and/or post increase)
- Season greetings
- Birthday/Anniversary greetings
Designing the communication
Much has been written about the structure and design of email communications – so much that it looks a science by itself and a highly complex subject. I however would like to take a simple approach. Let’s consider a few pertinent points
- You must have a communication message that is of interest and relevance to your customer. Do not generate content at random without first considering whether your customer would be interested in the content. If interest is in doubt – do not send the email. Always keep the interest of the customer in mind.
- Keep the message short and simple. If there is a lot that you need to communicate, redirect them to a webpage with additional content
- Barring exceptional circumstances, let your message always have a call for action. Possible action triggers could be:
- Meeting with a sales rep – or asking for a telephone call from your business
- Request for additional information
- Place an order with you
- Request of a demonstration (in person or on the web)
- Subscribe to a newsletter
- Confirm participation in an event or seminar
- Or one of many actions depending on the nature of your email communication
At the end of each email campaign measure the effectiveness of the campaign. Important parameters could be:
- Value of sales made
- Number of leads generated
- No. Seminar participation confirmed/Sales appointments generated etc
- Email opened stats
- Calculate cost per lead/sale generated – and any other ROI calculations you would like to make.
You must calculate direct and indirect sales/brand building on account of the campaign (not every email campaign can be translated into direct sales. Some of the communications could be just a brand-building exercise, while others could be with the specific purpose of building sales). There could be many who didn’t respond to you by email – but called you up instead, or just landed up at your business to purchase. An email promo-code could build a better measurement of the direct benefits of your campaign.
And finally clean-up your contact database:
- Remove all email id’s that bounced on account of wrong email id
- Remove all email id’s that have unsubscribe requests
- Remove all email id’s that have been blocked by spam filters
This is an ongoing exercise and will ensure that you have a relatively clean email database. Set up mechanisms and assign responsibility for List creation, updating and management.
There are some simple steps you can take to prevent being labeled as spam and stay within the anti-spam law. In all your email marketing communications:
- Provide your business address and telephone numbers
- Offer an unsubscribe option that actually works
- When an unsubscribe request is received – remove the contact from your mailing database and also acknowledge that you have received the unsubscribe request and acted upon it
Email marketing is not very complex if you develop sharp objectives and clear expectations of what the medium can do for you, and more importantly what it can’t. In the hands of experienced marketers, Email marketing can be a very potent weapon in building brands, generating leads and supporting conventional media marketing campaigns. There is no magic bullet or campaign style that works for everyone. Each business will need to work and set up their own objectives, Email marketing strategies and execute their campaigns. What works for one business may not work for another.
In my opinion every business should spend time developing a basic email marketing strategy and listing their expectations. However there is no benefit in spending inordinate amounts of time on strategizing or arriving at the perfect plan. There isn’t a perfect plan. Most learning comes from structured experimenting on marketing and content variables over multiple Email marketing campaigns.
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