A Great B2B Email Campaign Begins with a Great Plan
Internet marketing has fast become of the hottest and most exciting ways to generate a lot of business through your marketing effort. There are a lot of ways to go about using the internet to generate business including banner advertising, affiliate marketing and search engine optimization. But the miracle of email has been proven to provide one of the best ways to reach out and touch other businesses that you want to do business with.
A well developed business to business email
marketing plan can become the backbone of a successful program to
keep your company prosperous and moving forward. B2B email campaigns
serve to keep you continuously in touch with business customers and
partners so nobody "falls through the cracks". Email is also an
excellent way to network with new customers that you learn of
through references from business partners or to recruit new business
"cold". If your B2B email campaigns are well designed and thought
out, they can become a significant part of your long range business
plan.
But as a business person, you know that a mature and well tuned
marketing campaign of any sort doesn't spring into existence without
a lot of thought and hard work. That has been true of marketing
plans for generations and that aspect of business development has
not changed in the world of email and internet marketing. To be a
success when you "roll out" your B2B marketing campaign, you have to
do the hard work of planning for weeks and months before that big
day. So to create a great email campaign, there are some questions
that you should include in your planning process.
What Are the Goals of Your B2B Email Campaign?
No good business or marketing plan can succeed
without a clear definition of what you want to achieve. Before spending
money on building an ambitious email campaign, you must know what you
want it to do for your business. Each B2B email effort will have a
specific objective. One might be to solicit new business clients or
business partners. Another might be to generate enthusiasm for a new
product or service. Yet another might be to rebuild relationships with
established business contacts with whom you have fallen out of touch.
You have to know what your goals are so you can measure success. If you
want to increase your business by 10% and your B2B email campaign is
central to that plan, you must know where your sales are now and be able
to measure success when the program has been deployed. That is why
defining in significant detail exactly what the goals of the email
campaign are is job #1 for planning the effort.
Who Are You Talking To?
It doesn’t take a lot of logic to realize that you have to build a solid
email address list that will be used to distribute your B2B campaign
materials to. The good news is that the definition of your target
audience is part of the definition of your goals. If you are seeking to
generate new business from established customers, you already have the
email addresses you need. If you are hoping to generate new customers
through referrals, you may use your existing customer base as part one
of your plan and then build a valid list of potential clients from that
first effort. Know your goals and then know who you need to contact to
make those goals a reality. That is just good business planning which
works perfectly when planning a big B2B email campaign effort.
What Other Internet Marketing Efforts Can Your Coordinate With?
As we mentioned earlier, to be successful in any marketing plan, you
have to mount a multi-tiered program. That is certainly true of your
internet marketing. If you already have a robust and sophisticated
online marketing presence, that is a natural way to power your B2B email
campaign by tying it in with your corporate web page or other online
marketing efforts.
What you are doing right now online may also take you back to job #1 and
affect your definition of your goals. For example, if your goal is to
generate customer interest, a strong online business life may mean you
will drive that business to your web site to be measured in internet
traffic and sales rather than in phone calls or even visits to a retail
location.
You should also plan to coordinate with each part of your internet
marketing program and each of them may be represented by a different
team and supported by a different technical department. For example, if
you want to "entice" business clients to come to your web site to take
advantage of a promotion or a contest, you must include the subject
matter experts who take care of your website to be prepared to support
your offer with a payoff that will draw the new clients in and take them
through the promotion to the desired action which might be to collect
their contact information or make a sale. So as you plan your B2B email
effort, include every part of your existing online marketing presence.
In that way, you capitalize on the success the business has already
realized in cyberspace.
These are the starting places of a great B2B email campaign but these
are not the end of the questions to ask as you coordinate this important
marketing effort. How you design your B2B email campaign will be
influenced heavily by the target audience and the goals of the effort.
You must take into account techniques that must be used to avoid spam
filters when you send out your emails. You may need links in the email
to generate activity as soon as your prospective business client reads
the email and those links should be carefully designed to use the value
of the email to take the customer to the next step.
It is a learning experience to know how to build each B2B email
campaign. But with each new email marketing effort you plan and execute,
you will get a better feel for how to ask the right questions. Then your
email efforts will be focused and yield a high level of success that
more than justifies the costs of using the internet to expand your
business.
