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The Essential Guide to B2B Email Marketing
Introduction:
E-mails have played a very important role in communication through businesses to businesses in this modern age of global connectivity. Although many business meetings practise the usage of fare-to-face communication to attempt a good deal, it is much more convenient to be using the current electronic communication technology for a faster paced communication and instantaneous receipt of messages. This also enables the communicators to exchange message more effectively in a much smaller time span. When it comes to being a marketer, the topmost goal for the marketer is to get as many customers as possible to buy the services which are up for being sold. But to make it happen successfully, it is necessary to create a bridge that will form a strong relation with the customers which will in return provide value to the customers, and loyalty of customers to the companies. That is where email marketing shows its magic.
Business to Business Marketing
It may sound like this – a business is selling their products or services to another business – which is entirely what business to business marketing is actually about. But even in this b2b relation, there is a customer and then there is a seller. It just depends on what is being sold to whom, and when. However, if we put it in the simplest terms, business to business marketing is actually prevalent largely among businesses to use their products as parts of their goods and services for sale. In most cases, the b2b marketing is focused among a group of wholesalers, manufacturers, construction firms, industries and so on.
Email Marketing
This is an extremely important part of integrated business to business marketing strategy. It also leverages this kind of communication where the permission is a prerequisite for nurturing the relation with customers, leads, and sales. It offers numerous advantages over the other prevalent methods for marketing. Emails are cost effective in comparison to direct mails. Considering the fact that the cost for postal mails is on the rise, the costs for delivering emails are constantly declining. Most importantly, it can be customized in numerous ways and can help the business get much more of values from the website itself. Business emails also generally provide a much stronger investment return.
Do’s and Don’ts of email marketing:
Email marketing depends largely on how relevant the message is with respect to the prospect of the business. Success comes to those who embrace the principle of relevance and respect when it comes to email marketing strategy in b2b marketing. Although there are many companies that may ignore or fail to understand this simplistic principle, certain things can be kept in mind to ensure the success of this strategy. So that the emails are not being perceived as spam, there are certain things which can be done:
• Make your emails completely permission based.
• Personalize it for different customers and target businesses.
• Make sure your emails are customer-centric, meaning, give them a glance of what they might want to see.
• Your emails should be relevant enough and predictable.
• Make sure you give the customers their space – your emails must reflect respect and a sense of privacy.
Also, here’s a list of what you email should never have:
• It should not contain any deceptive or exploitative message or indications.
• It should clearly not be haphazard – make a well visible and neat email for the customers to perceive what they wish to buy.
• Never make b2b emails company-centric. Remember, you are sending these emails to sell your products to someone who may think they’ll benefit from your services.
• You don’t need to broadcast b2b emails to everyone and it certainly should not be unsolicited.
Strategizing the emails:
Identify the Goal:
Before the planning for the emails begin, you should make effort to identify the goals which you want to reach if you want your b2b emails to be successful. Make sure your email portrays your willingness to build credibility for your services or goods. If needed, you can attempt to change how the customer may perceive the outlook on your business. It is important to identify yourself as the company leader and create a strong database. Make sure you lower the communication costs and use online resources effectively.
Who are you marketing for:
Since you want to be attracting more traffic in response to your emails, you have to identify exactly for which target audience is this marketing being done. In this case you have to clearly identify the requirements of the industries who you wish to target. Also, make sure you know which products the customers would be more attracted to. Offering valuable services will create different responses from variable respondents, so make sure you customize the emails for different target audiences. Furthermore, you need to identify the end-users of the product and what offers might they find valuable for themselves.
Competitors:
Wherever you go, whatever you do, you’ll find competitors waiting to take your place from you. That’s right – you have to keep an eye out for your competitors and make sure your services and products do not get redundant when it comes to email marketing. You need to make sure you know what your competitors are up to, so that you can get and edge over the newsletters your rival companies are providing to your target audiences.
Setting up the campaign:
Now that you know what to do to get your emails delivered successfully, you will require campaigning. You don’t need any specific technical skill or qualification for this, but you need to have certain tools to guide you through the process of creating emails and distributing them – a process which would have otherwise been manual and labour-intensive. Systems like Constant Contact, MailChimp and HubSpot are great for online marketing campaigns.
Conclusion:
The email newsletter you are sending to your customers, is not for you – it is clearly for the ones you want to sell your services to. Make sure you design your emails for successfully promoting your business and getting sales. This is important because many a times customers would scan the emails before they begin reading them. Hence, work your way into making a creative, catchy opening so that you can statistically and practically ensure traffic to your business website through b2b email campaigns.
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