How to create effective emails for busy B2B audiences
Before creating your next email for your busy B2B audience, start by having a look at your email analytics. Your typical users’ behavior will tell you a lot about how you should write and design your emails to generate certain actions and to improve email marketing effectiveness.
Comparing your results with relevant benchmark data is also a very good practice. For example, you shouldn't overlook the fact that more and more people are using mobile devices to check their email, a factor which most certainly has a direct impact on conversion rates.
- According to most email marketing reports, the percentage of emails opened on mobile devices is at least 50%. (OptinMonster)
- 35% of business professionals check their email on a mobile device. (HubSpot)
- 52% of customers are less likely to engage with a company because of a bad mobile experience. (CampaignMonitor)
Use every bit of knowledge to improve the creation process and the KPIs for your entire array of email marketing assets.
Table of contents
Standing out for all the right reasons
Keeping promises and delivering amazing experiences
The Inbox
Standing out for all the right reasons
45% of marketers say that competing for attention in the inbox remains the top email marketing challenge (Validity).
This comes as no surprise if you think about the work inbox. How many emails do you receive daily? How many remain unread? And how many do you delete without even opening?
No matter how hard we all try to keep the inbox tidy, emails are piling up while we focus on other important and urgent tasks. Your B2B audience's inbox is probably just as cluttered as anybody's.
When your recipients are skimming through their inbox, you need to stand out and make a good impression. There are three elements you can and need to nail from the very beginning: the sender’s name, the subject line, and the preview text. These three are like an envelope that helps people decide if your email is worth their time or not.
Sender Name
Your audience looks at the sender’s name to determine if you’re a trustworthy source. High open rates are achieved when recipients associate your sender name with your brand - and your brand with a company that consistently offers high-quality content.
68% of users declare that the sender’s name is the most important factor in their decision to open an email (CampaignMonitor).
The sender’s name can be the company's name, a person’s name, or a mix between the two. Some think going with the company name is the safest option. Others emphasize that a person's name might work better when trying to create a feeling of human connection.
Any alternative can be effective as long as the sender’s name is recognizable, familiar and consistent throughout the email series.
Subject Line
To write a successful subject line, combine what you know about your B2B buyer personas with the goal of your new email. Looking at previously collected data helps you determine what elements of a subject line generate higher open rates. A/B testing is always a good idea because you keep learning what works best for your audience.
Your recipients judge your email by its subject line, so you need to make a good first impression:
- Prove that you truly understand their needs;
- Set the right expectations with a clear, honest message;
- Capture the essence of what you’re delivering in the email body.
Use personalization techniques wisely to make your audience feel valued and to improve open rates.
- 72% of marketers say email personalization is the tactic that generates the highest open rates (Validity).
- Including the recipient’s first name in the subject line can increase open rates by 26% (Campaign Monitor).
Writing a short subject line is essential if you want to avoid truncation. Take into account that mobile devices display only 25-30 characters of your subject line, while a desktop inbox displays around 60 characters.
Preview Text
The preview text (sometimes ignored by marketers) is also an important part of the "envelope" your audience sees in the inbox. It might not be as strong as the subject line, but it certainly supports the idea you are trying to convey in the subject line and helps you persuade recipients to open your email.
Some email marketing automation solutions (like the one developed by HubSpot) allow you to edit the preview text directly in the email marketing tool. If your tool doesn’t have this feature, ask your web developer for help. It only takes a couple of minutes to set up.
Not all email service providers display preview text, so pay attention to optimizing your subject line and sender name if these providers are popular with your audience.
The Email body
Keeping promises and delivering amazing experiences
To build trust, your email body should reflect the promise made in the subject line. You're writing to a busy B2B audience, so it’s best to wrap valuable content in a format that is easy to digest.
Your audience knows that your emails are just a gateway to a landing page or a blog post, so their email attention span is short. Go for a layout that helps people scan and absorb information in just seconds. This way, they can immediately identify the core message and what you're offering.
Responsive design is a must if you want to ensure your email looks sharp on any device. That's why taking a mobile-first approach is always a good idea - after all, if the email looks good on mobile, it's going to look just as good on desktop.
With all this in mind, let's have a look at how to integrate brand identity, personalization, images, videos, CTAs, and signature so you can create amazing experiences for your audience.
Brand Identity
Once your contacts open your mail, they expect high-quality content delivered in a particular format. Stay true to your brand identity: tone of voice, personality, values, visual elements (logo, colors, typography). Meet their expectations with consistency.
- The greatest negative impact of inconsistent brand usage is the creation of confusion in the market. (Lucidpress)
- Brands that are consistently presented are 3 to 4 times more likely to experience brand visibility. (Lucidpress)
Choose responsive templates for each email type (newsletter, transactional, milestone, etc.). You can use alternative templates as long as you maintain a balance between variety and uniformity.
You want to be recognized as a brand that sends useful, scannable, mobile-friendly emails. Aim for short format emails. Capture your audience’s attention with just a few yet powerful words that generate interest for your offer (educational or commercial) and in-depth information.
Personalization
Personalized messages make your B2B buyers feel that their needs and goals truly matter to you, which contributes to trust-building. Using an email marketing automation tool empowers you to create personal experiences for each subscriber.
- 62% of marketers say personalized emails are the most effective (Ascend2)
- 59% of users say that unique offers from the company make them feel valued (Ometria).
- Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates (Experian).
- 4/5 marketers who exceeded revenue goals had a documented personalization strategy (Monetate).
You can integrate subscriber data into your email body with personalization fields. This facilitates the creation of powerful dynamic content and contextual experiences based on user data: interests, behavior, lifecycle stage, demographics.
Images
Integrating and optimizing images is still challenging. But you want to offer seamless email experiences for everyone in your audience, regardless of their device, email client or personal preference.
Including the "View as webpage" link at the top of your email is necessary, but not sufficient for optimal user experience. To ensure your email makes sense even with images disabled:
- Use background images and HTML text/live text;
- Set an alt text for your images;
- Create your CTAs by using HTML and CSS instead of images.
Avoid sending image-only and image-heavy emails. Add images thoughtfully, prioritizing load time and accessibility for positive user experiences.
Videos
There are several ways to integrate your video: embedding, thumbnail with a play button + link to a video, GIF, GIF + link to a video. Videos can significantly improve your email performance:
- The word “video” can increase opens by 19%;
- Video thumbnails can increase clicks by 50%;
- 65% of executives will visit your site after seeing a video.
(Vidyard)
For better results, you want to integrate the video after your copy. This way, your audience still understands your message even if the video doesn't work.
As most of your subscribers will probably be opening the email at work, it’s better to turn off the sound and add video captions. Just like with images, be careful at the file size and how you embed videos in your email. Some clients won't recognize or allow your recipients to watch the video.
If you don't want to embed the video, you should know that almost all email clients support GIFs (except Outlook '07, '10, and '13). Use this animation to include important information in a professional and captivating way.
CTAs
You have a strong subject line and a solid offer tailored to your buyers' interests. Now it’s time to get them to click on your CTA. Following best practices and A/B testing will lead you to the formula that works best for your target.
Nevertheless, here are some guidelines to get you started:
- The average B2B newsletter contains 3 CTAs.
- Including only one CTA can increase CTR by 42%.
- CTAs placed in the left region of an email have a larger impact.
Before thinking about copy and design, check if your CTA is functional across all devices and email clients. Never use image-based CTA buttons. Replace GIFs, PNGs, and JPEGs with HTML and CSS to make your CTA button accessible for all recipients.
A well-written CTA is short and clear. It includes action-oriented verbs that create urgency and uses the first person to increase CTR. Good design makes your CTAs stand out: use large, easy to read text; choose eye-catching, contrasting colors; create white space around the buttons.
Signature
Your professional email signature and sender name must always be linked. Make it clear for your recipients who the sender is and how your company or a representative can be contacted.
Your email signature is another way to engage with your audience and to show why you are a trustworthy company:
- Include 2-3 important social profiles;
- Share the latest content materials;
- Celebrate recent accomplishments;
- Link to customer reviews;
- Announce new products or limited offers.
Use images wisely so your signature doesn't become cluttered or doesn't generate deliverability issues. And, of course, perfectly integrate it with the email body’s design.
Signatures that are branded and include a banner CTA generate more engagement than non-branded and text call to action. (Hubspot)
After putting a lot of effort into creating the perfect email for your audience, it's time to analyze the results and see how effective your emails are.
If you want to compare the effectiveness of your emails with your competitors’, "Ultimate Email Marketing Benchmarks (2020): By Day and Industry" is a great report which offers benchmarks across all industries.
Here are the average email benchmarks for all industries:
- Open rate: 17.8%;
- Click-Through Rate: 2.6%;
- Click-to-Open Rate: 14.3%;
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.1%;
- Bounce Rate: 0.7%.
Tracking your results is just as important as identifying the factors that impact these KPIs. Yes, there are so many variables that influence email effectiveness. But keep experimenting, testing and evaluating your alternatives until you figure out what works best for your busy B2B audience and your email marketing efforts.
Featured image source: Daria Shevtsova
