Email Marketing Strategy Part 1

Table of Content

Email Marketing B2B & B2C

Email marketing is one of the most important tools for marketing professionals in any industry as it delivers the message to the mass audience with a personal touch. However, as the fundamentals of email marketing might be shared across the sectors, the specifics still differ, as each nature’s target audience is diverse.

Business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) share commonalities and differences. To achieve your goals in business directions set for a specific target audience, this article will discuss the main difference between the B2B & B2C, methods in creating the best strategy, rules, and regulations that must be followed, and emphasise the importance of email lists.

B2B Email Marketing

B2B marketing tends to approach the target audience consistently by using newsletters and other methods of distribution, which involve the growth of relationships and prospects. This is due to the nature of the motivation where showcasing expertise in certain fields to bring authority to the solutions that the company provides is the main objective. To do so, email marketing is one way to drive that to a more efficient and productive method to drive profits. 

In 2022, B2B marketers utilised email as the third most commonly used owned-media platform for content distribution, and 44% of them considered email the most effective marketing channel. The reason is that the main focus of email marketing has always been to provide leads through the funnel by offering significant information during each stage, pushing towards better conversions.

Email engagement, in particular, serves as the fourth most insightful metric to evaluate marketing performance for B2B marketers, as it helps open channels for further development in relationships with target audiences. 

In the end, B2B email marketing is to provide the best return on investment (ROI) possible for the growth of one’s business. Therefore, marketers in B2B tend to focus on the ROI and clear methods to show that to the important stakeholders in the company. Hence, audience segmentation is one of the most important parts of B2B marketing. 

As most industries focus on B2B, the main target would be senior roles with decision-making responsibilities. The content in the email will then tend to be driven by the informative nature and solutions that can be provided for businesses. 

Examples of B2B emails commonly used in marketing:

  • Product & service update announcements
  • Education on products & services
  • Webinars & offline seminars invites
  • Lead generation campaigns
  • Reminder emails
  • Customer survey emails
  • Greetings during important holidays
  • Promotional

B2C Mail Marketing

The nature of B2C email marketing differs from B2B, as the target audience of the email is focused towards the general public who could potentially use the products and services in their daily life. This is most commonly focused on the companies that sell consumer goods and services like fashion, medical, software, supermarkets, and e-commerce.

Email marketing can be a difficult channel for marketers to master, as 50% of B2C marketers mentioned the task of growing their email list as one of their biggest challenges. The reason is that B2C email marketing approaches the target audience at such a personal level, where the emotional connection is needed to bring more certainty to the brand identity and drive credibility. As a result, storytelling is one of the most important methods in B2C email marketing. 

Its method is to tap into the positive emotions of the customers and drive engagement to make the purchase. In most cases, this is driven by motivational approaches like great value, sales, and exclusivity to certain products and services. 

To put it simply, B2C email marketing seeks to find the natural desires, problems, and changes in lifestyles of potential customers to satisfy the need to purchase the product and services. 

Through the process of personal connection, brand loyalty will form, having a more positive influence on the decision-making process. This means that whether it’s segmentation from demographics, purchasing power and behaviours, or personal preferences, the segmentation of the target audience takes up an important portion of B2C email marketing. 

To connect those segmented customers to the purchase stage for a higher conversion rate, highly optimized call-to-action (CTA), content, and user experience are key. The content needs to be at a level that is sufficiently persuasive but not to a level where it pressures the audience, which could drive away leads. After all, B2C marketing aims to tap into the reader’s natural needs and desires.

Examples of B2C emails:

  • Promotional
  • New product and services announcement
  • Recommendation according to personal preferences
  • Welcome emails
  • Reminder emails
  • Special holiday events
  • Seasonal campaigns
  • Offers for personal occasions such as birthdays & anniversaries
  • Educational

Creating an Effective Email Marketing Strategy

Cleaning email list: Remove the dead customers, the unsubscribed, and audiences with low engagement. Get rid of list that marked you as spam, bounced, and bad emails.

Creating value: In the email campaigns, highlight the points that can’t reach the audience. For example, you can show the product information to the audience, like the product specifications, size fitting, and the guide for the customers. This creates value for the audience. To find out what your audience’s wants and needs are, simply ask them by giving them options on the content. The best method is to use a survey. If you want to go for more experimental, you can have them reply to emails asking for their preferences.

CTA optimisation: Call-to-action is important, giving higher click-through rates for the email campaigns you have set out. A better click-through rate also means better conversion rates. Use the creative power by applying buttons and other methods of creative incorporation. Start with strong words like buy, download, shop, sign up, and join us. Bring out the emotions of the customers. Incentivise your readers by offering special discounts. Provide exclusivity and limited chance messaging to drive the purchase.

User-generated content: UGC is another method to build trust and credibility with the audience. This generates bigger brand awareness than any other campaign. Linking testimonials, videos, and photos in the email can bring in more purchases. According to Everyday Social, over 70% of consumers trust the UGC and make decisions on purchases based on it. 

Utilise social media: Use your social media by adding it to certain emails like newsletters. Use social media to include CTAs back in the email campaigns. Use the share feature that the email platforms provide by linking your social media. 

Subject line: Better outcomes will be made with effective subject lines. Before the subscribers click on the email, the first thing they will see is the subject line. This means if the subject line isn’t convincing or intriguing enough, people will not click. To make the best possible subject lines, keep your characters to under 60, use more powerful words, resonate with the body of the email, and bring a more personalised tone.

Segmentation & targeted: Segmentation of email lists is one of the most important strategies in email marketing. Grouping a like-minded audience gives you more control over the content that is sent to the right audience. Suggestions on the segment could be based on the demographics, interests, actions, customer profile information, and location. Some of the methods to gather the information are to use the signup form and surveys.

Re-engage the list: There can be several reasons behind the drop-offs in your email list; nevertheless, it is important to re-engage the inactive subscribers. Simply put, it is more efficient to retarget the known customers than to find new customers. Therefore, it is important to consider the re-engagement strategy as part of effective email marketing. Usually, the main reason for inactivity is the price point or loss of interest in products. Try to offer them some discounts or promotions to warm up the subscribers.

Trigger-based: Trigger-based emails are automated emails that function when the user contacts with specific actions that are preset. For example, clicking or submitting certain information on a landing page can trigger a series of follow-up emails that go out to the subscribers who interacted with those links and sign-ups. Trigger-based emails can help uplift your communication with individuals on your subscriber list. Instead of sending the same batch of emails, the interaction between the individual and your company can happen using this method. Some of the methods are behaviour-based triggers, where the customer’s actions trigger the emails. Demographic-based triggers send personalised messages like birthdays & anniversaries. Time-sensitive triggers send emails to the customers based on the product of interest going on limited sale.

Personalise: According to a study done by Accenture, 91% of consumers tend to purchase products that provide personalised offers and recommendations. This brings the idea that every industry should be following the personalised methods of email marketing strategy. However, there are a few things to consider when crafting personalised emails for your campaign. Add your subscriber’s name in parts of the email, including the subject line, the start of the email, and the body paragraphs. Check the behaviour and purchase pattern to apply in the recommendations & promotion emails. Send birthday & anniversary emails with coupons. Lock in sales by emailing your subscribers when there is an abandoned cart. Give recap emails of the customer’s history.

Timing: Your open rate will be determined by when you send out your email campaign. If you send your email in the middle of the night, the open rate will be low for obvious reasons. Check the data to learn when your subscribers will open up their emails to estimate the best time for their phone usage for emails. If it is a B2B service, aiming to send during business hours should be the best practice. Always test; testing on the best time for open and click-through rates is one of the best methods to discover the optimised time. 

A/B Test: A/B testing is to experiment and check which email type performs better in terms of content and subject lines. The test could include email subject lines, copy, CTAs, design, links, the time emails are sent out, and different formats of content.Data Check: Always check your data after every campaign. Your click-through rates and email open rates are among the most important metrics to take into account. It is the way to learn how to improve on the next campaign, shifting the directions based on the data for your overall email marketing campaign.

Email Marketing Regulations You Must Know

There are regulations that are set so that the consumers are protected. In the case of email marketing it is the same where the aim is to protect the user’s privacy from spam and unsolicited emails, giving guidelines to businesses to follow for ethical practices. 

In the early days, rules were there for spam, but as technology advanced, so did the rules, giving users the option to opt out of the email lists and companies being only able to send emails to those who have given them the consent.

The catch here is that every country has slightly different rules on this matter. For the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) oversees email marketing for all the states. In some places, an international regulatory body takes charge, like in European countries, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the main regulation that the European Data Protection Board enforces.

The Importance of Your Email List

An email list is something that you do not forget and let run wild in email marketing. In fact, it is one of the most important strategies that need to be organised and optimised regularly to keep the best possible client relationship. It is the foundation of email marketing strategy, as the company that works on building that list invests time and money in the beginning to bring it up to a certain level. 

To build your email list, more directions should be given to the visitors on your website and landing pages. There should be CTA buttons that lead to subscribing to be updated. Consider notifications and pop-ups to appear while the user is browsing the website. Using social media to promote the email newsletter and promotional emails that give discounts is another method.