Exploring the role of automation in B2B email marketing

Integrating automation into your B2B campaigns will pave the path for unwavering customer relationships by allowing you to send the right messages at the right time. That’s not all; it will also let you save valuable time and resources. Today, we attempt to uncover in detail the various ways in which automation can bolster your B2B email marketing strategies. Read on to find out!

Dedicated lead nurturing, rigorous follow-ups, and long sales cycles – all of these make B2B email marketing quite a tough nut to crack. Unlike B2C, where one can drive sales by appealing directly to the end customer’s emotions, B2B requires marketers to team up with pragmatism and logical reasoning. If you wish for your B2B email marketing campaigns to contribute handsomely to your coffers, you can’t afford to look beyond automation

Improves efficiency

Email automation is nothing less than a boon for your marketing and sales team for it spares them from several time-intensive tasks such as:

• Eliminating duplicate data and leads
• Making segments on the basis of customers’ activities and interactions
• Lead nurturing
• Developing content
• Creating and maintaining pipelines for executing campaigns
• Ensuring communication between external and internal teams

As a result, instead of getting bogged down by long-drawn-out workflows, your marketing team gets the liberty to channel their energy and creativity towards beefing up the strategy behind your campaigns. Additionally, by verifying your email contacts and embracing email marketing automation, you free yourself from having to use different software for each of your channels; instead, you can coordinate everything from one platform.

Skyrockets conversions

Among the top players in the B2B arena, 69% of them rely on marketing automation for customer acquisition while 50% utilize it for customer retention. The reason market leaders choose automation is not that hard to figure out, really. 

Imagine having to follow up with all of your customers manually. By the time you get to the last one, you have run yourself ragged and spent an exorbitant amount of time in the process. Building fruitful business relationships requires you to respond instantly to your clients with unique and tailored messages; tasks that can easily be accomplished via email automation. Don’t you get agitated when you have to wait longer than a few minutes for your food to arrive at a restaurant? Well, the contacts on your email list are not much different either.

Another glowing virtue of email automation is that it lets you assess the reader's engagement levels and assign a score to that interaction – a practice known as lead scoring. Lead scoring, when combined with behavioural information such as emails opened, links clicked, and purchases made gives you the required data to create email campaigns that catalyze the conversion of qualified leads.

Implement personalization at scale

Personalization starts with segmentation. Segmentation is the practice of dividing your customers into different segments based on various parameters such as age, occupation, gender, location, browsing history, preferences and interests, past purchases, position in the sales funnel, and the like. Don’t worry, you don’t need to do this segmentation on your own; all you have to do is create an automation workflow specifying which action should move your contacts into which segment and the software will take care of the rest. 

Now, the question is, once you’ve segmented your contacts, how do you follow it up? By closely monitoring the activities and interactions of each section and responding accordingly, right? Again, automation comes into the picture. It lets you implement personalization at scale, ensuring that every single contact on your email list receives relevant messages at the right time. Subsequently, this results in higher interaction and engagement, and of course, greater conversions.

Synchronize marketing and sales goals

Email automation will help you cultivate improved communication and collaboration between your marketing and sales departments. Thanks to lead scoring, the automation platform will be providing your sales team with only qualified leads, sparing them from having to vet prospects on their own. Once the leads enter your pipeline, they’re divided into different segments based on their interactions. 

Now, instead of trying to come up with a generic strategy for all your subscribers, the marketing team will craft different promotional approaches for different segments. So, essentially, while marketing will strive towards building relationships, sales will work towards determining the conversion timelines. There’s nothing more harmonious for a business than its sales and marketing departments working in tandem, is there?

Different types of B2B email automation campaigns

Now that you understand the crucial role of automation in B2B email marketing, let us look at the different kinds of email automation campaigns you can include in your strategy.

Welcome campaigns

Welcome emails are crucial for businesses because they set the tone for your brand. Since they are the first set of communications that your subscribers receive from you, it is important that you curate them meticulously to be able to cast the perfect first impression. Different B2B brands opt for different strategies with their welcome campaigns- some simply prefer to thank their new customers, few attempt to convey their personality by highlighting their values, missions, and objectives, and then there are some who share positive reviews and testimonials too. Based on your brand image, you are free to choose a route you deem fit. 

Take a look at this example from Indeed.

Nurture campaigns

Decision-making in the case of B2B email marketing takes time because it is handled by a team or a department, not a single individual. While your clients mull over your offerings, it is important that you engage them with insightful nurture campaigns.

Here’s how Divvy goes about it.

Follow-up campaigns

Fostering trust, establishing credibility, driving conversions- these are just a few of the goals that follow-up campaigns achieve for their brands. They are key to generating business and understanding the hurdles that customers might face with your business.

Take a look at this follow-up email from Salesforce.

Event marketing campaigns

An event gives your customers a first-hand taste of your brand, incentivizing them to engage more with you in the times to come. But for them to attend your event, you should send impactful event marketing emails their way. State the logistics, highlight the benefits, and spell out the rewards for your subscribers. 

This email from Adobe is a perfect example of a B2B event marketing email.

Wrapping it up

We are pretty sure that, by now, the importance of bringing automation into your B2B email marketing campaigns is no longer lost on you. With email automation, you can ensure that your B2B campaigns always stay ahead of the curve and miles ahead of your competitors!

If you think that B2B email automation is a good fit, but aren’t sure how well it will integrate with your current digital architecture, we are always happy to lend some helpful advice. Our consultation services are always available. Contact us today.

---

Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest-growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free responsive HTML email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.