How to Drive Sales with Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies used by companies of all industries and categories. It is used by business owners to build and maintain relationships with subscribers, promote their brand, and offer discounts or incentives to their high-CLV customers. And research suggests that email newsletters are the most popular form of content marketing 81% the B2B marketer – but how do you use this channel to not only acquire leads but also increase sales? Continue reading.

Understand email marketing

email marketing for business-to-business customers is referred to as B2B email marketing. The main goal is to cultivate relationships with potential customers, increase brand awareness and generate sales. Effective strategies include distributing newsletters, special offers, product updates, and free tools, all tailored to the exact recipient’s wants and needs.

Done right, B2B email marketing provides recipients with valuable information that motivates them to make a purchase or take some other desired action that pushes them further down the marketing funnel.

Components of email marketing that help increase sales

Three factors distinguish B2B email marketing from generalized (B2C) marketing automation. This is exactly why it increases sales:

1. Account-Based Email Targeting

When you select a B2B goal, you are actually defining a set of goals, and your strategy must account for the differences between the many prospects within an organization. To effectively reach people and generate sales, you need to send unique emails to different people, all belonging to your target organization.

2. Longer lead times and sales cycles

In the B2C universe, buying a product is a short process. In contrast, the procurement process for a company can be time-consuming. Getting different departments to work together on a purchasing decision is a lengthy process, especially when budget approvals are required.

3. Value-Added Content

Therefore, when composing B2C emails, you may want to be more transparent about your goal of closing a sale. On the other hand, focusing on providing detailed resources and information tends to increase the effectiveness of B2B emails. Educational content such as growth reports, industry standards, buyer’s guides, and webinar videos help a B2B customer understand the value and importance of your brand.

5 tips to increase sales with email marketing

Now that we know the critical components that make email marketing campaigns so effective, here are a few tips to get you started and actually increase sales:

1. Reconsider the subject line

The subject line is the most important element of your email marketing campaign. To increase sales, you need to start with the very first thing people read. For example, a query is often an effective way to trick people into opening an email, which serves as the only way to generate email revenue.

2. Edit your email copy for brevity

Although there is no standard limit on the number of words in an email, persuasive and effective emails are between 50 and 125 words. This depends on the type of content you offer. In general, however, you should strive for a concise message.

Keeping information to a few sentences and short paragraphs makes it easier for the reader to search an email for relevant information. Consider putting lengthy content on your website and referencing it in the email instead of including everything in the body of the message.

3. Make your CTA easy to see and click on

Your email’s call-to-action (CTA) needs to be clear and purposeful, regardless of the intended action. This means that you should invest a lot of time in formulating the right message. Accordingly Campaign MonitorUsing a CTA icon can increase click-through rates by 28% compared to using a plain text link. Test out a few different call-to-action (CTA) buttons or icons to see which ones really impact purchasing decisions.

4. Introduce B2B email marketing automation

Email marketing automation is the common strategy to increase sales. Not only does it increase the efficiency of your business, but it can also increase email performance and return on investment. By employing an automated email marketing campaign, users can streamline the sending and resale of emails to your B2B website guests/visitors.

5. Use A/B testing to understand which email marketing tactics drive sales

While most businesses depend on email marketing automation, most email marketers do not use split or A/B testing in email campaigns.

A/B testing is an optimization tool that allows you to compare different iterations of your emails to see which version works best for the target audience. A/B testing allows you to test emails on your actual subscribers and get accurate data to help you with your email marketing plan and get the intended results (e.g. more sales and revenue).

Questions to ask when your email marketing campaigns aren’t driving sales

When your email marketing campaigns have peaked and aren’t growing sales, it’s worth asking yourself a few key questions.

1. Do you have a clear high intention email list to work with?

A successful email marketing campaign requires a solid email subscriber list. You need to build a mailing list of people who really want to listen to you, and provide them with material, offers, and news that will be extremely useful to them. Adding opt-in alternatives to your email list across your site is a smart way to do this.

2. Have you segmented your audience?

You probably already use email segmentation to prevent everyone on your list from being sent the same email. If you’re not currently doing this, consider geolocation, occupation, interests, purchasing behavior, and past browsing history as benchmarking categories.

But don’t throw away your main inventory. When you replace your primary subscriber list with a multitude of tiny segmented lists, email segmentation can become problematic. A master list facilitates the eventual development of new segments and the necessary adaptation of email marketing techniques.

3. Are you automating too much?

Email automation is a helpful tool because it allows you to send high-quality emails with much less effort and time. Plus, you can send multiple emails to your checklist with the click of a button. Avoid sending too many emails to your subscriber list and crashing in the spam folder.

4. Are you sufficiently focused on the actual email content?

It might be counterintuitive if you only send promotional emails to your subscribers. In order to get the best results, it is important to combine and continue playing with the core components. With informational emails, you can make sure your subscribers are up to date with any new or exciting developments related to your brand. Also, let your readers know about any new partnerships, significant internal adjustments, and other developments.

5. Do you end up in the customer’s spam folder?

If your emails are indeed being classified as spam and blocked by spam filters, you may need to adjust your email settings – as it’s a surefire way to nip a sale in the bud. Double opt-in is one way to avoid this problem. This happens whenever a user signs up for email marketing and then confirms the subscription via a unique email address and landing page to get added to an email list. This approach minimizes the probability of spam and increases user interest. Also, avoid spam-like phrases such as “Please read” and “Competition”.

Final Thoughts

Email marketing can serve as an effective way to engage consumers and generate revenue. But to increase the effectiveness of your initiatives, you need to know how to strategize your emails and get the most out of them.

By following the tips and best practices we’ve discussed, you can improve your email marketing results and increase sales. However, since the sales cycle can be longer with B2B email marketing, it’s important to measure other metrics in the meantime – like click-through rate, bounce rate, email forwarding rate, open rate, and unsubscribes.

Keep an eye on those too 23 marketing metrics to track in 2023 to increase your overall sales.