Many B2B organizations have lengthy gross sales cycles. For that reason, nurturing and following up with leads, prospects, and prospects is considered one of your most necessary advertising and marketing duties. B2B electronic mail automation makes your efforts simpler, more practical, and fewer time-consuming. It helps and amplifies the work of your gross sales group, warming up leads and nurturing prospects.
Nevertheless, in our survey on electronic mail advertising and marketing with Holistic, we discovered 58% of corporations are utilizing only one to 5 electronic mail automations. To be clear, greater than half the businesses within the examine have two to 5 folks on their electronic mail groups.
So these organizations perceive the significance of electronic mail advertising and marketing, however they could be underutilizing B2B electronic mail advertising and marketing automation.
Automated electronic mail campaigns will let you persistently comply with up and keep on the minds of key gamers who’ve a task within the shopping for course of. After they’re able to make a shopping for choice, you need them to return to you. That occurs extra typically while you’ve put within the work of nurturing and constructing a productive, two-way relationship through which you’ve offered worth, demonstrated experience, and proven professionalism.
After all, automated B2B electronic mail campaigns are additionally necessary after somebody closes the deal or a purchase order is made. They’re essential for onboarding, retention, and upselling.
Listed here are 13 various kinds of B2B electronic mail automation to think about in your technique.
Leap to an electronic mail automation:
- Welcome sequence
- Persona/position nurturing
- Content material-specific nurturing
- Thought management sequence
- Gross sales follow-up
- Onboarding sequence
- Occasion advertising and marketing
- Product launch
- Buyer suggestions
- Buyer retention
- Subscription renewal
- Re-engagement
- Thanks emails
1. Electronic mail welcome sequence
A welcome electronic mail sequence is your first alternative to endear new leads, prospects, and prospects to your organization. You possibly can ship this sequence out in a wide range of conditions, together with when somebody makes a brand new buy, fills out a kind for gated content material, joins your electronic mail listing, attends an occasion, or takes one other motion. It’s a normal welcome to your model.
A welcome sequence doesn’t have to be a set size. You may ship a single electronic mail, or a number of may work higher. Take a look at to see what works greatest in your firm. An electronic mail welcome sequence represents a chance to:
- Congratulate or thank somebody for opting in.
- Reveal your values, mission, and core beliefs that drive what you do.
- Activate feelings and desires by portray an image of what somebody can obtain in the event that they persist with you.
- Invite them to affix you, and emphasize the group your organization has constructed.
- Give them a ‘fast win’ — one thing you give at no cost that they’ll implement proper now, and that has an instantaneous influence.
- Reveal your persona.
- Reveal your authority and experience.
- Share testimonials and buyer tales.
- Make a gross sales provide or upsell.
Which of those you prioritize, and through which electronic mail of the sequence, will depend on a wide range of components particular to your online business and targets. However an excellent welcome sequence will do as many of those as doable.
They are saying to place your greatest foot ahead, and that’s precisely what model asset administration instrument Niice does in its automated welcome sequence. The e-mail features a pleasant welcome video and encourages new subscribers to discover the options and the advantages of the product utilizing useful content material.
2. Persona and role-based nurture campaigns
In the event you’re promoting software program providers, sending emails to the chief expertise officers at corporations with 100 or extra workers might be far more practical than sending them to your total listing.
Why? As a result of you may converse on to their wants, pursuits, and considerations. You possibly can converse their language, present them how properly you perceive their scenario, and earn their belief.
For this reason it’s so necessary to create electronic mail segments, or sub-lists, inside your total electronic mail listing. It’s possible you’ll not know a subscriber’s title or particular job operate, however you may nonetheless phase them right into a related group by issues like the actual touchdown web page that persuaded them to affix your listing or the precise lead magnet they downloaded.
Take a look at how NewsCred (which has since rebranded as Welcome) curated particular content material on this electronic mail that’s meant for C-suite executives.
Personas are significantly highly effective instruments when used properly. Get extra information on the best way to use purchaser personas in your electronic mail advertising and marketing.
3. Content material-specific nurture campaigns
Suppose your organization manufactures HVAC tools. You would be promoting to house builders, business venues of all kinds, and authorities workplaces, along with the HVAC installers and contractors who serve these industries. Every of those has very completely different wants, preferences, and ache factors.
MarketingSherpa decided that irrelevant content material is the second-highest reason for unsubscribes. But when you understand what your readers are considering, you may remove this drawback lengthy sufficient so as to add worth to their day and reveal how your services or products meet their wants.
In our HVAC instance, house builders seemingly have the experience to decide concerning the particular varieties of apparatus they want. However they could profit from data on the best way to maximize set up effectivity and implement high quality management measures on a big scale. In the meantime, native HVAC installers will respect supplies that assist them clarify and promote completely different sorts of programs to householders.
4. Thought management nurture sequence
Lots of content material as of late borrows from different content material. And that’s a wonderfully tremendous technique. However originating new content material helps prospects view you with extra authority and experience.
As a part of a thought management sequence, your messages must be much less about “how-to” and extra concerning the “why” behind traits, adjustments, or requirements associated to your business. It typically is smart to painting your organization’s management because the originator of thought management content material as an alternative of the advertising and marketing group. You wish to reveal that firm leaders are on the leading edge and that their knowledge extends all through your entire group.
Whereas authentic thought management is greatest, you may “borrow” some authority by that includes well-respected people inside your content material. If the business’s most acknowledged chief is prepared to do a “sit down” with an govt at your organization, it implies a vote of confidence that you just should be doing one thing proper.
Keep in mind, thought management is usually about timing and relevancy. You possibly can’t be a frontrunner when you’re late to undertake and promote the concept. So these sorts of B2B electronic mail automations have to be up to date ceaselessly and aligned with the client journey.
5. Gross sales follow-up emails
What occurs after you demo your product? What do your prospects hear subsequent? Usually, you’re doing the demo for end-users somewhat than the decision-maker. Even if you’re working with a decision-maker, they could nonetheless must go run the numbers or seek the advice of with others on their group.
What does that imply for you? It means they’ve develop into your chief salesperson. However are they geared up?
It’s your job to ‘prepare’ them, and you are able to do that with a follow-up electronic mail sequence. Restate your advantages. Present your worth. Share testimonials. Present outcomes. Give information. Handle frequent objections and misconceptions. Give them the substance they’ll use to ‘promote’ their groups in your system.
Right here’s how SalesForce adopted up with contacts acquired at a dwell occasion in 2018.
6. Onboarding electronic mail sequence
After somebody makes a purchase order, don’t cease speaking with them by way of electronic mail. You need them to achieve success so that they get probably the most out of your services. Generally efficient adoption of a brand new product requires slightly coaching and training.
For that, you may develop an onboarding electronic mail sequence. This may embrace:
- Instructions on the best way to use your product.
- What to do if one thing goes mistaken.
- Different methods to make use of your product.
- The way to make it last more, make it work higher, or use it in different methods.
- Associated services.
- Reminders of expirations and renewals.
- Occasions they’ll attend.
- Buyer tales that make them be ok with their buy.
- Alternatives to depart suggestions and share testimonials.
HubSpot’s onboarding electronic mail retains the joy excessive and prompts subscribers to proceed down the onboarding path. The message presents a sequence of checklist-like objects to get began on the platform whereas the headlines reiterate the important thing promoting factors of this system. Plus, there are many choices for readers to discover their favourite parts and an upsell CTA on the finish.
7. Occasion advertising and marketing electronic mail sequence
For dwell and digital occasions, which may embrace tradeshows, conferences, and webinars, you might have a number of challenges.
First, you want folks to return, together with those who signed up. No-show charges, significantly for webinars, can run very excessive.
Second, you want them to be excited concerning the occasion. You need them wanting ahead to it. Anticipating it. Not dreading it or on the lookout for a strategy to get out.
Third, that you must comply with up afterward. Way more gross sales are made after occasions than at them. The ROI from occasions is within the follow-up.
All three of those challenges might be hit head-on with a high-powered occasion advertising and marketing sequence that begins properly earlier than the occasion, and continues after it’s over.
On this sequence, you wish to re-state advantages and promise highly effective outcomes and rewards. Because the occasion will get nearer, spell out the logistics: The way to attend, the place to go, the place to click on, deadlines for early hen reductions, particular affords at no cost presents, and last-minute reminders to attend.
This post-event electronic mail from Marketing campaign Monitor was crafted particularly for the no-shows. Although not as impactful as really attending, an automatic electronic mail sequence simply for individuals who missed the present will help you extract as a lot worth as doable out of your efforts.
8. New product launches and upsells
These are straight-up gross sales emails. But when your subscribers are enthusiastic about what you promote, that’s not an issue. Consider how folks geek-out over the newest launch from Apple.
Use B2B electronic mail automation for product launches to construct anticipation and settle for pre-orders. You also needs to automate electronic mail advertising and marketing upsells, which nudge prospects in direction of excessive plans or higher merchandise. Spotlight the advantages of premium options and encourage folks with unique promotions.
Totally different emails ought to contact on completely different facets of creating the sale. Use testimonials and clarify the analysis behind the brand new product, the unmet want it was designed for, the result it’s going to produce for the client, why their bosses will prefer it, and the precise gross sales provide.
Designmodo presents their new product in three completely different ways in which nonetheless forestall the copy from turning into redundant. This type of flexibility lets subscribers select their very own path ahead and might improve engagement charges. They provide a video, then a written description in addition to an (incomplete) bullet level listing that’s designed for click-throughs. And, in fact, there are a number of alternatives for readers to leap ship and purchase straight away.
9. Buyer suggestions campaigns
How do you construct higher B2B electronic mail listing segments? Ship out surveys.
It’s possible you’ll wish to collect suggestions at sure factors within the buyer journey. What did they consider the onboarding expertise? How do they really feel 90 days, six months, or a yr after signing with you? Might your organization higher serve their wants shifting ahead?
Timing is every thing. Triggering emails with buyer surveys based mostly on particular actions and time intervals means you get the proper suggestions from the proper folks.
Clarify why the survey issues and the way subscribers might be serving to once they fill it out. You may throw in a perk like a sweepstakes entry, particular reward, or low cost on future purchases. Survey campaigns also needs to have a deadline. Construct your marketing campaign round that date, and embrace some reminder emails.
Surveys are nice for gathering helpful suggestions about your organization and product efficiency in a wide range of key areas. When you may pinpoint your prospects’ most urgent frustrations, you may extra precisely allocate your funds to make the largest good points.
10. Buyer retention campaigns
Upon getting a buyer, you wish to preserve them. You possibly can lose them to rivals, however you may also lose them to ‘nothingness’ – apathy. They might nonetheless be in your listing, however they’ve moved on of their minds.
One of the best ways to stop that from taking place is to thrill them.
Be proactive and create a number of B2B electronic mail automation campaigns yearly that make particular affords, time-limited reductions, or alternatives for unique entry to one thing like a sneak peek at a brand new product or expertise. Making your prospects really feel particular and wished — like a VIP — is a good way to extend their loyalty.
You may as well preserve the constructive emotions flowing through the use of testimonials and case research that reaffirm how a lot of a distinction you’re making in your prospects’ companies.
And, proceed being useful and related by sending well timed suggestions, how-to movies, and content material that targets their wants.
11. Subscription renewal campaigns
If your organization makes use of a subscription or membership income mannequin, renewals are your bread and butter. The way you method renewals will depend on whether or not subscriptions renew robotically or manually.
If computerized, then a retention marketing campaign is extra acceptable. If guide, equivalent to an annual buy of a software program license or the usage of a service, this electronic mail sequence ought to deal with all the worth purchasers obtain. It might additionally embrace a survey that asks for suggestions about how you are able to do higher. If somebody signifies dissatisfaction in particular areas, this may even set off an extra electronic mail about upcoming, associated product enhancements.
This sequence ought to do extra than simply beat them over the pinnacle with warnings about how their subscription is about to run out. You want a few of that, however you’ll get higher outcomes when you present appreciation and ship worth.
Although it would appear to be a typical renewal electronic mail, this one from Namecheap significantly efficient as a result of it presents a particular, discounted provide, suggests extra and different purchases the client could make, and creates urgency by putting a deadline on the offers.
12. Re-engagement campaigns
Some prospects haven’t purchased something for some time, or they’ve been in your listing however have stopped interacting together with your emails. In the event you promote a service, you may discover they’ve stopped utilizing what they purchased. If it’s a subscription service, you want a B2B electronic mail automation marketing campaign to seek out out if one thing’s mistaken and decide how one can stay related to their enterprise.
Generally, this may be a chance to each remind subscribers about your product and nudge them towards a fair higher choice. Take a look at how Grammarly seems to be to reactivate and reengage prospects with this electronic mail.
Reengagement campaigns also can embrace:
- Surveys asking about communication preferences.
- Particular one-time affords to ‘re-sell’ them on doing enterprise with you.
- Presents of unique consultations or ‘problem-solving periods.’
- Easy questions asking in the event that they nonetheless wish to hear from you.
13. Thanks electronic mail sequence
B2B corporations are sometimes working with expensive providers and there’s a variety of belief concerned in selecting the correct distributors and options. Somewhat gratitude goes a great distance. Take into account greater than only a one-time “thanks” electronic mail.
This marketing campaign works particularly properly on anniversaries: when somebody first turned a buyer, or proper after they renew their subscription. Your automated thanks marketing campaign can provide issues like rewards, particular presents, unique invitations, particular movies, and photographs – be artistic right here. Simply guarantee that it feels honest and private.
Take a look at the partaking manner FontShop thanked new subscribers for signing up for its electronic mail e-newsletter. It’s greater than a thanks, it builds anticipation for what’s to return, that means these newsletters are unlikely to be ignored.
How does your B2B electronic mail automation look?
The very last thing you need, after spending all the hassle creating electronic mail automation campaigns, is in your messages to fall flat. Low electronic mail open charges, dangerous hyperlinks, sloppy typos, illegible textual content, or wonky graphics can all spell doom for even the perfect of intentions.
Electronic mail on Acid helps corporations create error-free emails with most effectivity. Which means that each electronic mail you ship seems to be good in each inbox and to each particular person studying them.
A entice electronic mail groups fall into is that, as a result of they make use of templates, they don’t want to check these campaigns frequently. The e-mail world, nevertheless, is continually evolving. You by no means know when a consumer will begin rendering your campaigns in another way. You by no means know when content material might get eliminated out of your website. And also you by no means know when your B2B electronic mail automation campaigns might begin ending up in spam folders.
Electronic mail on Acid will help with all these unknowns and extra. Use our electronic mail readiness platform to check each B2B electronic mail automation frequently so that you’re at all times delivering electronic mail perfection.
What’s in your martech stack?
Figuring out what electronic mail advertising and marketing options belong in your Martech stack might be difficult. So how are you aware what instruments are proper in your group?
In our whitepaper, Getting the Most from Advertising and marketing Know-how, we discover three questions associated to assessing new advertising and marketing applied sciences:
- How do you establish the instruments that may have the best influence?
- The place do you discover the time and sources to coach your group to make use of these instruments?
- How do you make sure that you’re utilizing the brand new advertising and marketing expertise to its fullest potential?
You’ll see survey information from advertising and marketing leaders in addition to revealing insights and takeaways that may aid you develop a course of for assessing advertising and marketing expertise like Electronic mail on Acid. You then’ll have a greater framework for deciding if and when new advertising and marketing expertise is correct in your firm.
Simplify the Electronic mail QA Course of and Ship Perfection
What’s one of the simplest ways to run by way of your pre-send guidelines? With Electronic mail on Acid’s Marketing campaign Precheck, we’ve simplified the method and set every thing up for you. Use it to double-check your content material, optimize for deliverability, guarantee accessibility, and preview how campaigns look on greater than 100 of the preferred purchasers and units. All earlier than you hit ship!
Creator: Betsy Grondy
With a decade of electronic mail advertising and marketing expertise, Betsy has executed electronic mail technique and execution for greater than 36 international locations (for native manufacturers in addition to Fortune 500 corporations) all from the consolation of her North Carolina house. As Electronic mail on Acid’s Senior Electronic mail Advertising and marketing Supervisor, she’s having fun with being meta in electronic mail advertising and marketing and striving for electronic mail perfection in each ship. When she’s not pushing the boundaries as an #emailgeek, you’ll discover her scouring flea markets along with her husband for cool classic toys and mid-century fashionable furnishings to revive.
Creator: Betsy Grondy
With a decade of electronic mail advertising and marketing expertise, Betsy has executed electronic mail technique and execution for greater than 36 international locations (for native manufacturers in addition to Fortune 500 corporations) all from the consolation of her North Carolina house. As Electronic mail on Acid’s Senior Electronic mail Advertising and marketing Supervisor, she’s having fun with being meta in electronic mail advertising and marketing and striving for electronic mail perfection in each ship. When she’s not pushing the boundaries as an #emailgeek, you’ll discover her scouring flea markets along with her husband for cool classic toys and mid-century fashionable furnishings to revive.
