Email marketing is still running strong. Even though tons of new digital channels emerged throughout the decades, email campaigns top the list of B2B audience nurturing practices. Emails can nudge the bottom-funnel leads to buy from you if you reach them with the right messaging at the right time.
Additionally, email marketing campaigns are best known for their impressive ROI. The email campaigns can yield a 122% ROI on average, which is 4 times higher than any other digital marketing channel. On top of that, the practice shows that strategic email campaign management allows both small and large businesses to achieve considerable revenue out of their campaigns.
So, letâs review what goals you can achieve through a consistent email marketing strategy and what practices and tools will help you manage campaigns most effectively.
Why Email Campaign Management for B2B Marketing?
The ease of automated email campaign management and tracking makes reaching prospects at every stage of their digital journey fairly simple. Moreover, you can easily attribute new leads to the email channel if you run campaigns based on email lists and track users with Traffic Acquisition reports and Event reports in GA4.
You can plan your email campaigns to cater to the purposes of each stage of the digital marketing funnel.
Top-Funnel Email Practices
Pushing brand awareness and demand-gen content via email is a common practice. According to the Content Marketing Institute, about 87% of B2B marketers expand their audience reach with demand-gen letters.
That said, youâll need to get the hang of email campaign management at the top-funnel stage and follow several principles to ensure sufficient email deliverability and avoid spam filters:
- Run automated campaigns through trusted email marketing platforms (Mailchimp, HubSpot, Marketo).
- Leverage audience segmentation, personalize subject lines, and work on the newsletter design for readability.
- Always include opt-out links in your letters.
How to Indoctrinate Top-Funnel Customers
At the onset of B2B email marketing strategy, your goals are:
- Welcoming new subscribers and introducing them to what you do
- Explaining how they can maximize the benefit of engaging with you online
Thanks to email marketing tools, these onboarding emails are sent automatically once the visitor subscribes to your newsletters.
The most important thing about triggered email messaging is communicating clearly and logically. You should describe what you are and what benefits users can expect and guide them on what to do next. For instance, you can attach links to your champion content you recommend checking foremost.
MIddle-Funnel Email Practices
At this stage, email campaign management focuses on lead nurturing content when prospects move to Consideration and Justification of their purchase options. You can win the middle-funnel audienceâs trust and shore up your credibility by sharing free e-books, calculators, and downloadable files.
Also, you can build a highly-performant pipeline with middle-funnel newsletters that update subscribers about recently published how-to guides, top lists, and comparison blog articles. Of course, youâll need tailored content to show a decent expertise.
Another case of sending middle-funnel emails is a drip email campaign. It implies sending a series of emails within a set timeline to gradually pique the customerâs interest. Like triggered email drips, drip emails can be sent in response to user actions like abandoning demo submission forms.
Segmentation of Middle-Funnel Customers
Often, youâll need to pique the interest of subscribers who are âstuckâ in their journey. The Segmentation campaign implies sending a letter promoting a particular type of content, such as a gated webinar, to your entire email list. Depending on the responses you collect, you can segment your leads and define a segment-specific nurturing strategy.
Marketers typically run segmentation campaigns and send semi-automatically or manually. Such an approach will take more effort. However, it pays off with a deeper understanding of your customers, increases sales velocity, and helps to target smaller segments effectively.
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing email campaigns target subscribers who make a specific action that identifies their interest. For instance, theyâve checked the page with subscription plans or downloaded some lead magnet.
This phase of email campaign management is about nudging them to take the next step of their journey, which is buying. To succeed with lead nurturing and win a new buyer, you must map and address the expected objections in your emails.
Bottom-Funnel Email Practices
Finalizing the purchase and retaining high-value customers are the primary goals of successful bottom-funnel campaigns. The successful outcome largely depends on the capabilities of your marketing automation stack.Â
Youâll need to reach SQLs with many transactional (trigger) emails with perfect timing and relevant messaging. Those should remind customers of the following:
- New case studies. Case studies effectively dispel objections of B2B buyers. Such enablement of peopleâs voices falls perfectly into the emerging trend of rep-free purchasing.
- Upcoming events. Informing subscribers is important for the similar reasons. Customers are eager to find out how their industry counterparts are tackling the same challenges they're facing.Â
- Post-sale feedback. Feedback is a powerful driver for the continuous improvement of your services. Moreover, you can measure customer satisfaction scores by collecting and analyzing feedback.
- Re-activation emails. From abandoned cart emails to win-back emails â you must not miss out on the chance to re-activate customers. Re-activation is a sure way to preserve and nurture customer relationships and win their long-lasting loyalty.
âAscensionâ Phase Emails
At some point, buyers are qualified for up-selling and cross-selling. Ascension email campaigns aim to make your one-time buyer a consistent one.
- Make sure you provide a highly relevant post-sale follow-up.
- Always refer to the actions the buyer has made. Donât focus on something they didnât make.
- Emphasize the value of the next logical step of their journey compellingly.
- Plan for and dispel the objections they might have.
Win-Back Email Campaigns
Growth-oriented digital marketing is all about retaining high-value customers so you can strengthen their loyalty and maximize revenue. Re-activation emails can win back customers who have dropped off from a buying cycle for a while.
Win-back campaigns usually start with triggered emails targeted to subscribers who havenât opened your emails for 1-2 months. However, these cooled-down customers need deeply personalized communication, and email marketers must tailor it based on rich historical data.
6 Tips for Effective Email Campaign Management
The tips listed below are your go-to solutions for winning greater outcomes of your current email strategy. Make a note of them, and donât forget to combine them to ensure consistently high performance,
1. Build an Email List from Scratch
Admittedly, you canât expect to build an organic email list from scratch. That said, there are many ways to use lead magnets and well-suited and well-placed subscription forms to capture usersâ emails:
- Add gated content. Grab prospectsâ attention with free downloadable stuff or online tools they can access in exchange for a subscription.
- Implement email opt-in forms that fit the webpage context. Your goal is to fit your opt-in form into highly relevant and engaging content.
Sure, you can add a pop-up email opt-in form for every page. But the fact is that pop-up forms have a 2-3% conversion rate. And only a small part of subscribers will engage with your newsletters.
To encourage site visitors to subscribe, you should effectively articulate the value of doing so. For instance, promise the blog readers to cover more hot topics or to share promo materials if they subscribe.
