“Write your B2B content with customer usage in mind because your readers are likely your prospects and customers. Figure out what they want to know and convince them how your brand can be useful to them.” – Chris Brogan
If you are a marketer, you are probably aware of how important lead nurturing is. Nurturing your emails will allow you to prepare your prospects to see your brand in a positive light. Putting it simply, whenever your prospect is ready to make a purchase, your brand will be at the top of their list.
The privacy that emails bring provides you with a strategic advantage. Your message has the chance of getting full attention from your leads without any disturbance. Also keeping in mind that many people check their email inboxes throughout the day, there is a high probability that your message will be read.
Here are some tips to help you build an efficient B2B email lead marketing campaign that generates sales:
Get Close to Your Customer
The first step you need to take is to try and understand your customers. Find out where they hang out and craft a message that will resonate with them. However, it is not as easy as it sounds. This process can take a lot of time. Do not shy away from making mistakes. Reverse engineering what they sell often helps many brands to understand their customers. Generally, it is recommended that you build up an approximate profile and modify it as you receive more information.
Know your target audience. If you try to sell to the entire world, you are simply wasting your time and energy. Social media can help you out with this. 38% of marketers rely on social media information to help them in better targeting.
You can use big data to profile your customers. Below is a graph of the most popular social media channels.
Qualify Your Leads
This involves understanding where your leads position in your sales funnel. It synchronizes with the process of understanding your customer but there is a distinction. Once you understand your customer, you will only need a few tweaks. However, with leads, you will have to place each lead and prospect through a checklist to qualify them.
At this stage, you need to differentiate between intent and interest. For this, you will have to gather data about your leads. Gated content and use cases are a great way of doing this. Refrain from asking for too much data as this will drive them away.
For qualifying leads, there are various methods. BANT techniques are a quick way of qualifying your leads.
Lead Segmentation
Brands often make the mistake of overlooking the benefits of email lead segmentation. This is an effective email marketing strategy as it tries to find a suitable ‘fit’ for recipients. When you provide your recipients with the kind of content they are looking for, their level of engagement soars. A 2010 report shows that 285 marketers witnessed a decline in their unsubscribe rates simply by using a segmented list.
Lead nurturing with email marketing is highly influenced by the effectiveness of your segmentation. Intensively research your recipient demographics and segment them accordingly. Then understand the niche of each group and provide personalized content. For instance, if you sell skincare products, a 22-year-old customer and a 56-year-old customer will not look for the same moisturizer. There is no way the same email can satisfy both.
Research shows that email segmentation can amplify your email marketing metrics across the board.
Set Up an Effective Landing Page
A powerful landing page will highlight your benefits and best features through a comprehensive message. Share your brand’s message but through your reader’s eyes. When you set up your landing page, follow the concept of segmentation noted above. You have got to be as precise and persuasive as possible to entice your readers with what you can provide. Try to tie in your qualification story about how you came up with the product or service.
Design consistency is also an important factor and often overlooked by marketers. Your landing page should resonate with your email. It should be similar to each other or your prospect will feel like they landed on a different page and exit immediately.
Below is an image of an effective landing page:
Personalize Your Content
This is the tipping point of your email marketing campaign. Compelling and personalized content increases engagement and improves the relationship you have with the leads you are trying to convert. Poorly executed content will probably alienate your leads forever.
Personalized content can improve search engine conversion rates by as much as 39%.
There is no perfect recipe to create killer-content; however, following the points below will keep you on the right track:
- Begin with the solution: Highlight the problems that your customer is facing and how your solution can help them.
- Hype up your solution: Don’t just reveal what you have to offer. Instead, highlight the struggle more and reveal your solution at the end and how it can help.
- Highlight the best features: Let your readers know about the benefits of your product.
- Prove it: Through reviews, testimonials or other means show how other people have benefited from your products to convince your leads.
- Put up your final CTA: Finally, ask your leads to signup, visit another part of your content, or make a purchase. Your whole content should be structured around this CTA.
There is no secret mantra or a perfect guide to building the best B2B email lead marketing campaign. However, following the advice we have shared above should set you on the right track.
Kristin Mortis is a Marketing Manager with 7+ years of experience at TDInsights based out of Plano, Texas. She helps businesses deliver the strongest marketing turnaround with cutting-edge digital strategies and tools. She writes about B2B Marketing, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and other technological innovations. Connect with Kristin on Twitter to learn about the emerging practices being implemented in the B2B segment.
B2B marketing stock photo by Patrick Foto/Shutterstock