B2B Email Marketing: 5 Strategies for Ecommerce Success

Regardless of the marketing trends that come and go, one channel will remain consistent and controllable – email.

Email marketing continues to be a direct and cost-effective way to communicate with an audience. This is commonly understood within Direct to Consumer (DTC) ecommerce, but less so in Business to Business (B2B).

In this article, we’ll explore how you can utilise this channel for B2B ecommerce marketing success, nurturing leads, driving conversions and building long-term relationships with buyers.

Does B2B email marketing drive results?

In short, yes. B2B email marketing works as well, if not better, than its DTC counterpart. Studies show that email marketing in the B2B space generates 40% more leads compared to other channels like social media or paid advertising.¹

This higher performance can be attributed to the nature of B2B relationships and the decision-making processes; they are longer processes throughout which email marketing can add value and build trust.

It’s precisely this difference that means you shouldn’t approach B2B email marketing as you would DTC.

How is B2B email marketing different from DTC?

Your B2B audience consists of commercially-minded decision makers who are looking for high-quality products, ROI, and strategic growth opportunities. They want to keep on top of industry trends, whilst also staying commercially-minded.

To create an effective B2B email strategy, consider these key differences from DTC marketing:

• Audience intent: While DTC marketing often appeals to emotions and quick decisions through promotions and flash sales, B2B communications must focus on demonstrating expertise and delivering tangible business value.
• Sales cycle: B2B purchases typically involve longer decision-making processes with multiple touchpoints. Your email strategy needs to nurture leads through this extended journey with consistent, relevant content.
• Decision-making process: While DTC purchases often involve a single decision-maker, B2B decisions typically require buy-in from various team members, each with their own priorities and concerns. This means your email content needs to address different perspectives and provide comprehensive information that helps build consensus among the decision-making team.

How to create a B2B email strategy for your ecommerce brand

The key to leveraging this marketing channel successfully as a B2B ecommerce brand lies in the delivery of tailored, value-driven communications that are strategically timed with your customers’ buying journey.

Let’s look at five strategies you can implement to turn your email marketing into a powerful revenue channel.

1. Create value-driven content

As is evident through all of the strategies that follow, addressing concerns and business challenges should be at the core of your B2B email marketing strategy. Your audience isn’t looking for flashy promotions or discounts – they need content that helps them make informed business decisions.

Whilst the details of this will be depend on your vertical and products, look to create content that adds value by:

• addressing specific pain points in your audience’s industry;
• providing actionable solutions to common challenges; and
• sharing relevant case studies and success stories.

For example, a B2B pet food brand targeting retailers, groomers and veterinarians might leverage the following types of high-value email content in order to educate buyers and build trust:

• Pet food market analysis: Insights into growing trends in the market, like raw diets or sustainable pet food.
• Ingredient spotlights: Highlighting the benefits of specific ingredients for pets.
• Product comparison guides: Helping buyers understand the differences between product lines.
• Retail best practices: Guidance on how pet stores can optimise product displays, educate customers and increase sales.

2. Segment your audience

Much like in DTC email marketing, list segmentation is vital for success. These segments allow you to tailor your messaging to specific audience needs.

However, how to approach this for B2B email marketing varies from DTC. You’ll want to segment your list based on criteria such as industry, job role, seniority, company size, customer lifecycle stage, etc.

The real power of segmentation comes when you combine several segments (i.e. job title and company size) to create highly targeted segments. This multi-dimensional segmentation approach allows you to create highly personalised campaigns that speak directly to specific audience needs and pain points.

For example, you could target senior decision makers at enterprise companies with educational content, while directors at mid-sized companies receive messaging focused on product costs and customer trends.

Join Stephen Rowley, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Swanky, to learn more about email segmentation for DTC ecommerce brands.

3. Personalise email campaigns

Personalisation is the process of adapting an email based on the customer profile. It aligns with segmentation, because your email content should be valuable and tailored to your recipient.

One example of personalisation is to include dynamic content in emails. This can look like a variety of things, from the recipient’s name and company, to product recommendations based on previous online behaviour.

You can also send personalised emails based on triggers such as website visits, content downloads, or email engagement patterns. For example, if a prospect downloads a whitepaper about a specific product feature, you can automatically trigger a follow-up email series with more detailed information about that feature, case studies showing it in action, and eventually a consultation offer.

No matter the personalisation strategies you opt for, they should all be focused towards adding value, answering questions and responding to pain points that the recipient is experiencing.

4. Automate the process

Email automation for DTC ecommerce enhances the customer journey to purchase by delivering timely, relevant messages based on customer behavior and buying history.

In B2B email marketing, automation serves a similar, but different purpose. It helps streamline complex lead nurturing processes and ensures consistent communication throughout longer sales cycles.

B2B flows should focus on nurturing leads and building trust with decision makers. You can do this through a welcome series or drip campaign triggered once someone has downloaded a specific resource or engaged with your website in a meaningful way. These automated sequences should deliver increasingly detailed and relevant information based on the prospect’s interests and engagement level.

Let’s look at this in context and explore the example of meeting prospective clients at a tradeshow. Having met a buyer in person you could add them into a campaign that starts with a ‘Nice to meet you’ email and continues with a series of automated emails introducing the brand and offering exclusive partner deals.

Other applications of automation in B2B email marketing include using it to win back leads that have gone cold and upselling other products to current clients. These can all be tailored to your brand and product range, ensuring you get the most out of this feature.

5. Test & optimise your process

Finally, all B2B email marketing should include processes for testing, optimisation and analysis. As you gather email performance data, use it to inform and refine your approach.

This data should include a combination of engagement and revenue metrics, such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and revenue attributed to email campaigns. You should also track metrics specific to B2B, for example lead quality scores and time to conversion.

Use these metrics to test and refine your approach with A/B testing. Some key areas to focus your testing efforts include:

• Email timing: Test different send times and days to identify when your B2B audience is most responsive. Remember that business hours and time zones play a crucial role.
• Subject lines and content: A/B test different subject lines, email content formats, and calls-to-action to understand what resonates best with your audience. Pay particular attention to how different segments respond to various content types.
• Frequency: Test different email frequencies to find the sweet spot between staying top-of-mind and avoiding inbox fatigue. This may vary by segment and campaign type.
• Personalisation elements: Experiment with different types of personalisation to determine which drive the most engagement. This could include testing various dynamic content elements, personalised subject lines, or segment-specific messaging.

Keep in mind that testing should be ongoing and iterative because audience behaviour and expectations change over time. By integrating this approach into your strategy you can ensure you keep on top of industry trends and continue to meet – and surpass – your customers’ expectations.

B2B marketing with Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a leading SaaS platform that incorporates email and SMS marketing with data, analytics, A/B testing and more. The platform enables both DTC and B2B email marketing, and can be seamlessly integrated into your ecommerce tech stack to develop fast and effective communication with customers.

Some features of Klaviyo that support B2B email marketing include:

• connecting with CRMs such as Salesforce and Hubspot to facilitate easy data transfer;
• uploading new leads directly to Klaviyo and nurturing through automations;
• segmenting your audience and targeting these groups with personalised and relevant information;
• storing data as custom properties and using this information to build and target audience segments according to your products and business;
• making use of Klaviyo’s A/B testing to learn what type of email content is most engaging and generates more revenue;
• utilising SMS marketing alongside email communication; and
• integrating Klaviyo with LinkedIn to develop a full-funnel marketing strategy.

Improve your B2B email marketing with Swanky

Swanky’s email marketing services have delivered revenue growth for a wide range of ecommerce brands. We leverage experience and insight to create email campaigns and automated flows that nurture customers towards purchase.

If you want to hear more about our email marketing and retention service, get in touch with the team today.

For reference:

1. rdmarketing.co.uk/knowledge-hub/b2b-email-marketing-1/#a1