There are significant differences between B2B and B2C email marketing. B2B email marketers know they must take a different approach to their email campaigns than B2C marketers.
An opt-in list can be defined as a list or database that contains email addresses of people who consented to receive the advertiser's email messages. The messages come in various forms, such as product and web site updates, or ezines. Opt-in lists are regarded as the most powerful marketing tool available on the world wide web, because opt-in lists can provide marketers with direct means of communication with potential customers, and gives a chance to promote products and services, plus building a continuing relationship with them.
Marketing through email has become the primary means of many advertisers to reach out to its customers. They are immensely attracted by the fact that email marketing allows them to communicate with their customers directly, with very minimal cost, compared to direct mail marketing.
Integrating social media tools and online marketing extend your trade show presence far beyond the event itself. As an added benefit for these shaky economic times – their low cost help boost your overall trade show ROI.
The B2B world is a perfect match for social media marketing. Why? Because both are all about building and nurturing relationships for long-term, ongoing loyalty. It’s not a quick-sell mentality. Trade shows give you the chance to meet your prospects and current clients face to face.
But don’t wait until the show and just see whoever turns up. Use these tips to generate pre-show interest in your company and pull prospects to your booth during the show. Then continue your marketing after the event with a clear follow-up plan.
An often asked question in my email marketing seminars is - What's the difference in B2B and B2C Email marketing?
Since this lack of understanding stems from the fact that we are both consumers at home and work, and businesses at the same time. Further, the fine line between work and home computing is getting blurred all the time as we do office email at home, and look for phone or other gadget bargains at work...
Here, I explain the key difference in B2B email marketing and B2C email marketing as I understand it.
B2B Marketers are trying to make everyone happy. The CEO needs revenue. The sales team needs qualified leads. Customers need information. Everyone is looking at marketing to make it happen. If you're a B2B marketer, you may feel like the success or failure of your company rests entirely on your shoulders.
We attempt to answer those questions by examining the evolution of modern marketing that has brought us to this point. Nothing happened overnight but here we are, feeling like we need to do more when in fact the solution may be doing less and spreading the responsibility. First, some background…
Successful customer loyalty is a key in Business to Business (B2B) markets – especially in economically demanding times. In the search for efficient marketing methods for sales and customer retention, online channels continue to gain momentum. Leading these is email marketing with clear advantages such as speed, effectiveness and low costs. And the possibilities of email supported communication are not restricted to the classical newsletter. Customer acquisition and long-term strengthening of individual customer relations are becoming the focus.
The use of email marketing in B2B markets offers special incentives for companies. One of the most immediate advantages is the low cost. According to a current survey by Forrester Research, communication via email can save you up to 80% of the costs associated with postal direct marketing campaigns. This also applies to lead time. While a print mailing usually requires three months of preparation, email campaigns generally only need three to five days.
Broadly speaking, B2C is the activity of a business servicing end consumers with a product and/or service, a consumer being defined as a buyer of products that are not business related. These products include food, clothes, houses, phone services etc. An easy example of a B2C transaction would be a person buying shoes from a retailer. The transaction that leads to the shoes being available for purchase, that is the buying of the leather, rubber and laces as well as the sale of the shoe from the shoemaker to the retailer, would be considered a B2B transaction.
When it comes down to it, a B2C email marketing campaign is most likely to be assessed by sales, which means it’s successful if it results in a purchase.
Some of the most effective B2C email marketing best practices include identifying the most opportune time to send messages, aiming to increase customer loyalty, using promotional offers in transactional emails and using surveys to gather data about customers.
If there is any single tool that we should be enthusiastically embracing as marketers, it is B2B email marketing. There is simply no way to match the value that B2B email marketing provides for communicating with prospects and customers.
The amazing thing is most of us are not actively engaged in any form of email marketing yet. At best, we send an occasional email blast to our customer base to introduce a new product or announce an event.
Many of us have NEVER sent a single promotional email to a list of prospects or customers. So if you are among the few who have, reach right back and give yourself a hearty slap on the back.
Understanding the needs and pain points of current customers and prospects is an important aspect for planning out B2B marketing campaigns. Traditionally, marketers would look to telephone and print surveys for needed marketing data. Depending on researchers to gather, input, compile and error check surveys results led to higher costs and missed marketing opportunities.
Today, B2B marketers have a new option for gathering this information – online surveys. The web provides exciting, flexible and social options for conducting surveys: it’s just so much more efficient than traditional means.
B2C email marketing is the most common form of email marketing used today. Business to consumer (B2C) email marketing differs from Business to business (B2B) marketing in many ways. The primary difference is the time between the point of contact and sale. When creating B2C email marketing messages, most marketer’s objective is to get a customer to click through and buy a product or service as quickly as possible. While relationship building is important, it is not as important as it is in a B2B email marketing situation.
B2B email marketing where you are promoting your services to other businesses is very different from B2C email marketing. Often the B2B buying cycle is much longer and depending on the purchase you often need to engage with people at different levels of the organisation. Often the person making the buying decision will not be the end user, they may also be reliant on influencers covering a wide group to help make the buying decision. B2B purchasing decisions take time and you should use email marketing to build a relationship and trust with your audience.
With B2B email marketing you are often trying to turn a cold prospect into a lead. How you define a lead will vary from business to business however more likely than not at some point the buyer will interact with the sales team. If your sales team is proactively following up these leads then you need to use your email marketing to gauge how ‘hot’ these prospects are. If you are waiting for leads to approach you then your email marketing needs to nurture the recipient to a point where they are ready to buy.
Are you wondering what’s happening to your customers? The truth is they maybe wondering what’s happened to you. Think of your customers as friends. You communicate with your friends regularly. Sometimes it’s just to keep in touch and other times it’s to let them know about something special that’s going on. But what happens when you don’t hear from your friends for a long time. You begin to wonder what’s going on.Why haven’t they called or emailed you? Are they still around? Maybe they have new friends and do not have time for you anymore. Maybe they haven’t heard from you in so long they think you’ve forgotten about them. In any case it’s important to keep the lines of communication open and stay in touch.
You need to be thinking of your customers with this same philosophy.Just because someone did business with you a year ago does not mean they will continue to think about you and remember you a year later when they need something else. If they don’t hear from you or see your promotions, chances are, they will forget about you and do business with another company who is maintaining some form of communication with them.
When you think of a brand, or specifically your brand, what comes to mind? Broken down, a brand constitutes a name, tag line, logo and design, all of which should ultimately define your business perfectly. A brand, we now know however, is much more than that. It is the voice, attitude, style, familiarity and feeling that people get when they think about a business or company, and it’s hugely important.
On the back of a global recession competition is stiff and just a click away at the best of times, so the more awareness there is surrounding and supporting your business the better. One of the ways that you can boost your brand is to use (or make better use of) email marketing. These days it’s an extremely affordable solution that can help keep you in the inboxes and minds of those who matter most to your company; your customers and subscribers. On average it takes 7 times for a customer to recognize your brand after first encountering it. The beauty of email marketing is that it allows to you to engage, interact and find out more about your customers long after they have left your site. In short, it helps them remember you and recognize your brand quicker.
Experience-based marketing is not a new concept, as it has been around for a while and many B2C companies have had a lot of success implementing it. The challenge is for B2B companies to use such techniques to advertise and market. Experience marketing gives the target audience a first hand experience by giving the audience the ability to touch, feel, see and know your offering or product.
Max Lenderman, the author of "Experience the Message", says engaging potential customers is more important than shoving advertisements into peoples' faces. With an attention span of 8 seconds which is equal to that of a goldfish, it is really hard to reach the target audience minds with one or two or even 10 instances of our marketing campaigns. I like two examples that Max Lenderman gave at the Art of Marketing event.
In theory email marketing is not any different than other types of marketing. This means the basic principles of marketing apply to your email marketing efforts as well. One of these most important principles is the importance of reaching your target audience. The ability to reach your target audience and convince them to make a purchase cannot be underestimated. This article will provide some insight into how Internet marketers can effectively reach their target audience.
The simplest way to reach your target audience is to allow existing customers as well as potential customers to register on your website and decide whether or not they want to receive emails with additional information and advertisements. When the users register they should be required to enter an email address. This registration process will allow you to compile a list of email addresses from each potential customer who expressed an interest in receiving additional information. Sending your email marketing materials to the members of this distribution list is much more effective than sending out a mass email to recipients whose email addresses you purchased. This is because the group of email addresses you compiled all have an interest in the products or services you offer while there is no information on the other set of email addresses to indicate whether or not the members will even have an interest in the products or services you offer.
There are very few prominent B2B brands in the general market. A big reason is that many B2B organizations view marketing as a necessity for B2C firms and instead concentrate on personal selling for B2B relationships. In this neat article by Prof John Quelch, he says that Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and GE generate far more B2B revenues than sales to end consumers.
He further discusses why B2B firms should try to build brands.
B2B marketers have to address thousands of small businesses as well as enterprise customers. They cannot do so economically using the traditional direct sales force. Branding gets the word out and established share of mind. All this helps, when a potential prospect has a need that requires to be fulfilled quickly.
Triggered emails are getting plenty of attention these days. If you’re a B2B email marketer, don’t skip over those blogs and articles on triggered email. You can use them too.
Typically B2C sales cycles are short while B2B sales cycles are much longer. The consumer purchase is less expensive and time consuming, while the business purchase is costly and requires research and buy in. Often a B2B sales cycle is three or more months, with several people involved in the decision, while a B2C purchase can take place online in just a few clicks.
For all of those reasons, some B2B marketers think triggered emails don’t fit in their email marketing strategy.
Opt-in email refers to those promotional e-mails sent to individuals who have requested to receive them. Not like spam, wherein promotional emails are sent to a large number of recipients without considering whether such individuals want the information, opt-in emails generally are sent only to individuals who particularly requested for them.
Opt-in e-mails often are personalized, targeted and convey information regarding specific promotions or topics that clients are interested and concerned to learn about.
Usually opt-in e-mails include product information, newsletters, helpful articles and advices or special advertising offers. When for instance a user frequents a certain website selling music and books online, he can "opt in" to accept publications or notices each time his favorite musician or author releases a new material; promotional e-mails may also grant the user with a discounted offer only available for individuals in the "opt-in" list.
Permission is not an optional extra, but is the basic apparatus in email marketing. Permission is the key component in gaining recipient trust, optimizing deliverability and getting investment returns. It is practiced by all legitimate email marketers. But many new email marketers, especially those from print, television, radio and direct mail background resist the idea of taking permission. They fail to realize that email is different from the rest as it is a personal medium, similar to telephone. And the result of decline in telemarketing is a clear proof of this malpractice.
Email marketing isn't about smacking the recipient with one email after another nor is it about list size. Initially some do get okay results when they do not take permission. These kinds of marketers send out floods of email to email list gathered in trade shows, from white paper downloaders and visitors. But for most of the marketers, mediocre result is not the goal. When subscribers give permission for emailing, results such as increased response rates, better deliverability, and increased brand affinity and trust can be seen. It does take time to build a list based on permission and to send out relevant messages to targeted readers. This list will become shorter by the day if this list is an unsolicited email list. In simple words, permission helps in achieving better results and it is the only method to build strong relationships with customers via emails.
Everyday Internet users receive tons of emails telling them to buy certain products or visit particular websites. While these emails arrive in the inboxes of unsuspecting Internet users each day, most of them pay very little attention to these emails. That is because emails which are blatant advertisements are often viewed as spam. Most Internet users have very little tolerance for spam.Reactions to spam tend to range from simply ignoring the emails and having the email addresses blocked from sending future emails to reporting the emails to their Internet service provider for further investigation. We realize many Internet marketers have difficulty keeping their email marketing subtle. Therefore this article will provide some useful information on how email marketing can be kept subtle so it is not viewed as spam.
One of the most important criteria for ensuring your email marketing is subtle and will not be viewed as spam is to provide something of quality to the recipients. This may include insightful articles, interesting quizzes or other useful facts which members of the target audience are likely to find useful. When email recipients realize an email they received is offering them something worthwhile such as knowledge or information about a particular niche subject they are much more likely to spend some time reviewing the email because they will not consider the email to be spam. In addition to using the creation of this copy to convince recipients that the email is not spam, the business owners can also take advantage of this copy by providing subtle advertising. This may include product references in the articles or links to your website throughout the email.
