Many of us who write about email marketing best practices, trends and the state of the industry tend to focus on B2C companies such as retail, travel and other ecommerce-oriented companies.
Maybe, in part, it's because we are all consumers. Everyone can relate to a case study or welcome email program from a sporting goods retailer, for example.
Consumer marketers have
traditionally led in marketing innovation with their larger budgets and resources, use of agencies and direct sales models.
However, B2B marketers are catching up to their B2C colleagues
and, in many cases, surpassing them with the breadth and depth of their email marketing programs. They're finding ways to deliver greater utility and value without risking channel burnout, as
we've seen on the consumer side.
These examples show how some B2B companies use email to build better client and prospect relationships and generate greater ROI from their marketing
efforts:
1. Upgrading the regular monthly newsletter. Almost all B2B companies send some form of monthly newsletter to clients and prospects. Long the bastion of
self-serving product announcements, press releases and company news, these newsletters have evolved to incorporate articles on research, best practices, trend analysis and other content that buyers
seek.
In some cases, B2B companies publish content that is as timely and valuable as trade-publication articles. Whether you call it "inbound marketing," "thought
leadership" or "content-based marketing," B2B marketers are using email to deliver highly valued content that moves prospects down the sales funnel or helps customers use their products
better.
These newsletters also incorporate social components and personality to build brand affinity.
2. Creating dedicated message streams for online resources,
including Webinars, white papers and other lead-development tools. Webinars and white papers have become staples for B2B lead generation and brand building. For Webinars in particular, email
is the key driver for registrations and attendance, nurturing these information seekers into sales-qualified leads.
Message streams dedicated to Webinar or white-paper announcements lend
themselves to notifications, reminders and follow-ups, sent as individual messages and incorporated into newsletters.
For more information on using email to promote Webinars, check out a
recent
Webinar I presented.
3. Using email as the foundation of a lead-nurturing program. According to
MarketingSherpa research, 70% of marketing-generated B2B leads are long-term. Historically, these leads have fallen into a black hole between the sales and marketing departments. Nobody wanted to deal
with these "cold" leads.
New marketing automation solutions that incorporate lead scoring, routing and nurturing capabilities now place these long-term leads firmly in
marketing's domain.
The best lead-nurturing programs use multiple channels: direct mail, telesales and email. But, email is the foundation of lead nurturing, with its automated cadence
based on specific tracks, and triggers based on behavior such as Webinar registrations, Web page visits and white-paper downloads.
Smart B2B marketers tap into this power of marketing
automation and lead nurturing to increase their lead-generation ROI and deliver more qualified leads to sales.
4. Using email for client retention and penetration. Emails
alerting clients to new features, events, maintenance and support schedules can educate clients on how to use and get more out of features, not just sell to them. This can boost client retention and
penetration.
Advanced marketers leverage product usage data into their email streams, sending product benefits and training emails to clients with little or no recent product usage.
5. Integrating email with CRM and SFA systems. To make these programs work, you must capture client/prospect data -- whether demographic, psychographic or behavior -- in a
central CRM/marketing database with real-time SFA integration.
This approach provides great control over email cadence and ensures lead nurturing and other emails are based on the most
up-to-date prospect data and behavior.
If you haven't tapped into this power of B2B email marketing, it's time to leverage these tools, which will help you take your program to the
next level.
Until next time, take it up a notch!
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Great insights, especially when B2B marketers understand that although they're selling services or software, their targets are the consumers of their message even if not the actual tangible thing they're selling.
A great example of a B2B brand using email to drive prospects to an online resource center (your numbers #2 and 3 above) is http://www.coremetricsTV.com This microsite was a 6-month lead generation effort, using email as the primary driver to the online resource center to access white papers, webinars, ebooks and Forrester reports which resulted in over 12,000 leads for Coremetrics. Since they're an online marketing optimization provider (web analytics), obtaining #5 was a given.
Pretty cool case study.
Hi Loren, It's always great to read posts about email marketing working in and for businesses. For a couple of years I have been educating my clients to understand it's about 1. Your List; 2. Your Relationship with your list and 3. The Offer to your list. Everything you wrote makes these three steps self explanatory. And if readers wish help to get their emails read, opened and acted upon, simply go to http://www.kurtjohansen and download my book "7 Killer Tips To Get Your Emails Read' valued at $29.95 for FREE.
Cheers Kurt Johansen - Australia's Email Marketing Guru.