In the early days of email marketing, there weren’t many ways to personalize email marketing. That has changed dramatically, and marketers who’ve avoid b2b email marketing might want to take another look at this channel.
The difference can be traced to new ways of presenting transactional emails, that is, emails that encourage customers to make an immediate purchase. Transactional emails can help enormously in reaching new customers, or in reaching current customers with new messages. They keep brand awareness foremost and help generate new sales.
The number-one rule of B2B email marketing in the United States is to make transactional messages completely with the CAN-SPAM program. Email subject lines have to relate directly to the invitation for a transaction in the email. Any promotion must be at the bottom of the email. Don’t allow the marketing to overshadow the transaction itself; otherwise it may get canned as spam.
What’s more, businesses better be able to sell what they’re offering where they’re promoting it. For example, never send an email to a business in New York about widgets if the widgets can’t be sold in New York, for whatever reason. Instead, marketing should definitely be soft-sell, complex yet subtle, say industry experts. Try to position the email as a service to the customer, a way to help a business do its own job better, not merely for Company W to sell more widgets. Keep the conversation going with the customer through offerings of helpful links, such as data sheets, blog posts, and product FAQs.