We’re all under pressure as B2B marketers. We need to drive more revenue, with smaller budgets, and our inbox is filling faster than we can empty it with requests from other departments. With all the unknowns around SEO and AI, PPC click spend, and even whether social media is even worth it in B2B, one
We’re all under pressure as B2B marketers. We need to drive more revenue, with smaller budgets, and our inbox is filling faster than we can empty it with requests from other departments.
With all the unknowns around SEO and AI, PPC click spend, and even whether social media is even worth it in B2B, one channel has consistently delivered – email.
B2B email marketing, done well, generates far higher returns than any other type of digital marketing. Done badly, it just gets lost in the noise of all the other content your prospects are being subjected to.
The difference is strategy. B2B email marketing is different to emails direct to consumers.
Sales cycles are longer. You’re targeting multiple decision makers. Buyers want more substance and proof. But too many B2B email campaigns still act like B2C, sending generic offers and discounts, then wondering why nothing is improving.
What B2B email marketing should do is keep leads warm for longer, give decision makers (or influencers) the information they need to buy, and make renewals or upgrades easy.
In this blog, you’ll learn everything you need to know about B2B email marketing, from strategy and list building to the types of campaigns you can use, to personalising emails, to automating and optimising campaigns, and measuring results.
Digital marketing channels should be judged on return. SEO and paid ads deliver, but results can be unpredictable based on search volumes or CPC.
Not with email. With returns as high as 34:1, there aren’t many channels that match email.
And in B2B, where contracts can be worth five, six or seven figures a year, these returns can be even greater.
Add automation in the mix with onboarding flows, lead nurture sequences, and re-engagement emails, and you can see results delivering up to 30 times the return of one-off blasts.
This is because in B2B, buyers don’t usually make a buying decision from one touch point.
It can take as many as eight touch points to get to a sale in B2B, according to a study by RAIN Group, and automated emails play a big part in nurturing leads without the need for manual outreach.
You can go even further by adding personalisation to your B2B email strategy.
Targeting the right message at the right person at the right time will get more conversions than sending out generic blasts to your entire list and hoping you hit the mark with someone.
Email has struggled in the past to get away from being seen as an afterthought or something to use to send offers or a monthly newsletter through. But businesses that use emails like this are missing out on higher returns.
What do you want email marketing to achieve? In B2B, objectives usually fall into four camps:
Keeping prospects warm during long cycles. Without it, deals can fade before sales ever get a chance to talk.
Giving sales content to move hesitant buyers quicker toward a sale. A well-timed case study can unstick a stalled deal by removing doubts.
Protecting recurring revenue. Renewal reminders and product adoption tips reduce churn and make contracts easier to renew.
Building credibility in your brand as an industry leader. Buyers want confidence they’re picking a partner who understands their market and challenges.
Once the goals are set, map content to the buyer journey.
Awareness emails should share insights.
Consideration content should explain and compare.
Decision-stage emails should deliver proof.
And post-sale sequences should make adoption easy.
None of this works on its own.
The first stage is usually getting sales and marketing together.
Sync engagement data into your CRM, trigger alerts when prospects hit targets or take certain actions, and create content that sales teams can adapt for one-to-one outreach.
B2B emails shouldn’t just be about marketing, they’re a choreographed approach to attracting more leads and earning sales.
The outdated way of “doing B2B email marketing” is to just go and buy a list of emails and start sending generic offers to everyone on it.
This doesn’t work. But now laws mean you have to be much more careful about who you send emails to.
Under GDPR and the UK Data Protection Act, you need a lawful basis to email someone.
In most cases, that means clear, informed consent.
The safest, most effective approach is to build lists through opt-in channels.
We’ve already written about how to build an email marketing list, but effectively in B2B you can use lead magnets like whitepapers, research reports, eBooks, webinars and gated tools to encourage prospects to give them your email address.
Segmentation is where you’ll see benefits from personalisation.
Different stakeholders care about different things even with the same product or service.
Finance wants to see return on investment.
An IT manager wants to see integration details and be sure your solution works with existing systems.
Sending the same message to both is a quick way to lose them. But segmenting lists by job role here can make sure you’re tailoring messages to meet the needs of the specific person.
Behavioural segmentation goes further.
Someone who registers for a webinar is more engaged than someone who just skimmed a blog.
So you can target more urgency at these people to encourage signups, demos or trials.
Tailoring messages to intent shortens cycles and signals you understand priorities.
The best B2B email campaigns line up with the buyer journey. Here are seven that consistently work in B2B:
Keep you visible during long sales cycles. This could be an email series around an industry benchmarking report to keep your audience interested in your brand until they’re ready for sales.
Reduce churn and speed up adoption by making your product or service easier to use. For example, a fintech brand could use a five-step onboarding flow, taking the user through the initial integration process to cut churn and improve the buyer experience.
Build authority and trust in your brand. By talking about challenges and trends in your industry, you can become a go-to source of information for potential customers.
Drive feature adoption and strengthen renewal cases. For example, you can use explainer videos or guided product videos in emails about product updates.
These are effective when used on segmented lists, with the event or webinar content matched to the needs of your audience. You could segment invites based on use case, sector or even region.
Get inactive subscribers re-engaged before they churn. You can use useful, educational content (like an industry guide) to get these subscribers taking action.
Help protect recurring revenue. Send personalised renewal reminders 90 days before the end of a contract with case studies or ROI reports to encourage renewals.
Read this blog for more types of email marketing campaigns.
Personalisation in email is more than adding [first.name] tags to the start of emails.
It’s about making content and messages relevant to the people getting the email.
One approach can be to split campaigns by role, with finance getting content about cost-benefits, and technical directors getting guides on integrations. You could also split by company type within an industry.
For example, a small family law firm is likely to have different challenges than a large corporate firm.
Behavioural triggers and automation can also help improve engagement. For example, following up quickly for a free product trial if someone downloads a spec sheet.
Depending on what you use to send emails, you can add dynamic content blocks to emails, which change what the user sees based on set criteria.
Say you’re a SaaS firm selling software across various sectors.
You could include dynamic content blocks to add sector-specific case studies into a single email template, so finance clients see banking case studies, and manufacturers would see supply chain case studies.
The first hurdle to get over with B2B emails is your subject line.
If this doesn’t entice someone to click, the rest of your email is irrelevant because no one will ever see it.
David Ogilvy once said that when you write a headline, you’ve already spent 80% of your advertising dollar. The same goes for your email subject line.
A/B tests can be effective at testing what messages your audience responds to.
Once opened, the content has to deliver.
A good B2B email should leave readers more informed than before they opened it.
Say you’re an accounting firm, instead of sending a promotional update, create a “tax briefing” email that explains any recent HMRC changes, or summarise industry reports to give your audience the highlights without them needing to read the whole thing.
Use case studies and social proof to build trust. Don’t just tell your audience how your product works or gets results, show them. Use real results like “Clients cut processing time by 30% in the first month” to show real outcomes.
When it comes to calls to action, make them clear and only ask the reader to do one thing:
Download the report
Book a demo
Register
Call us
Your audience needs you to be clear on what you expect them to do, so tell them.
Unclear language or multiple CTAs can compete for attention, confuse readers about which action to take, and result in them not doing anything.
Imagine spending time segmenting your email list, crafting a compelling subject line and writing copy that informs your audience and encourages them to act, only for your email to fail to get to your audience’s inbox or fail to render properly.
Email design and deliverability are something you can’t afford to ignore.
Not every email needs to be heavily designed. In fact, for some emails, like thought leadership, benefit from plain text design.
On the other hand, invites can afford to be more heavily designed.
Again, you can A/B test email formats to see which works best for the type of content in the email.
When it comes to deliverability, this comes down to authentication, keeping your list clean by removing inactive subscribers, and consistent email sends.
Automation is what turns email campaigns into nurture flows that run in the background. Done right, email automation can scale impact without losing personalisation.
There are lots of options for automating emails. Whether it’s using drip campaigns or triggering email sequences based on user activity.
It’s important here to use your CRM to keep marketing and sales informed of who’s doing what with contacts. Using your CRM, sales can have oversight of every interaction and judge when to call warmer leads.
You could also set nurture scores based on engagement and activity, so when a prospect hits a certain score, sales is notified to follow them up.
Measuring the success of emails is more than looking at clicks and open rates. These are important, but the real goal of email marketing is improving sales pipeline and revenue.
Look at the metrics that link to business outcomes:
By focusing on commercial results, you’ll understand the actual ROI of your campaigns.
That’s not to say opens and clicks are important. They are. And you should measure trends to judge how your messages and content are getting through to your audience.
If open rates are low, it means your messages might not be what your audience is interested in.
If click rates are low, your content doesn’t match the user intent or you’re not offering something they’re interested in.
Use A/B testing to improve performance. Don’t guess which subject line or call-to-action will work. Test everything.
Even small lifts in open or click rates compound when applied across thousands of emails.
Analyse behaviour across journeys, not just individual campaigns. Look for patterns, like which email in a sequence drives demo requests? Which piece of content consistently gets shared internally? These insights should improve future campaigns.
Keep lists clean to protect deliverability and ensure results are accurate. Regularly remove or re-engage dormant subscribers so you’re measuring true engagement.
And more than anything else, always use your data to improve future campaigns.
Review performance quarterly, act on what you learn, and keep improving.
When used properly, B2B email serves a purpose across lead nurturing, sales enablement and retention, among others.
Ignoring emails can result in leads going cold, renewals disappearing, and competitors gaining market share.
But getting it right can help automate your lead nurturing and turn targeted emails into a reliable revenue source both for earning new customers and retaining existing ones.
Get in touch with our email marketing agency if you’re interested in finding out how we can help you get more from email marketing for B2B brands.
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