5 Creative Email Marketing Strategies to Help You Build a B2B Leads Database

Effective email marketing for businesses is difficult to get right. You need to take time, figure out what truly works for your business, choose the right channels and do all these within a budget.

As a marketer, there is plenty to juggle when aiming to find the perfect strategy for all types of leads. What works for some companies will not work for every company out there.

While it looks like a waste, email marketing is sometimes about trial and error too. Sometimes, you simply need to figure out what works for your business to get some B2B leads. It’s also worth noting that not every email gets through the way you intend. According to DeBounce, spam accounted for 45.6% of email traffic, which means cutting through the noise with relevant, valuable content is more important than ever.

With these ideas in mind, here are some of the most creative strategies to try out.

Focus on design

The design depends on the industry. Whether you are part of the automotive industry, the cosmetic industry or any other field, you need to adjust your emails accordingly.

You do not necessarily need to hire a graphic designer to come up with a professional design. Research the industry first. Subscribe to your competition and see what kind of campaigns they rely on, as well as the text. It is perfectly fine to seek inspiration, but customize whatever you do. Even though design might not seem as important as the CTA (call to action) button, it will definitely help when you are looking for photography leads where the reader is more inclined to click on images.

Subscribe to a few industry magazines, too and focus on the style used in these publications. You can also use pre-designed email templates. There are lots of options out there, and you only need to customize them with your brand in mind.

Segment potential leads

Customer segmentation works on the same principles, whether you are marketing to businesses or customers. The same email may not work accordingly for everyone on your list, so you need to segment customers accordingly.

Segments may be decided by business sizes, industries, estimates of companies’ budgets or even different job roles. Not everyone wants the same thing, hence the necessity of a strategy. Stick to buyer personas and determine the perfect audience first.

Use existing data too. Look for patterns. Perhaps you realize that you have a bunch of managers with less than 10 employees. If they have never made a purchase, you need to create a segment with their attributes in mind.

Create one or more buyer personas

A buyer persona is a fictional image of your perfect customer. When it comes to B2C marketing, you normally focus on jobs, income, age and so on. When it comes to B2B marketing, you need to consider the industry, location, business size, budget, job roles and issues you could solve.

To create buyer personas, you need to get in touch with people in the industry. Get in touch with contacts, ask them about businesses interested in the product, potential issues, who could make decisions and so on. Creating buyer personas is essential to capitalizing on a B2B leads database and maximizing profits.

Also, send occasional surveys to current customers to find out more about their situations. You can give them small gifts for their reviews, such as vouchers or discounts.

Go for trackable results

There is one major mistake many marketers make. They track results based on their sales, but those sales may not necessarily be driven by their B2B marketing campaign. Your work is continuous, and you need to be able to track your performance.

What works today may no longer work in six months, so you need to adapt fast when effectiveness goes down.

With these thoughts in mind, goals must be measurable. Other than that, you need to track the right metrics.

Whether you are after more leads or a higher social media following, you need to track visitors, number of new registrations and so on.

Without tracking, you will never really be able to tell whether or not the campaign has been successful. 

Stick to drip campaigns

Drip campaigns are based on emails generated when triggered by one action or another. They are automatic and require a bit of planning. For example, if a customer abandons a shopping cart, the program will send a follow-up email later on.

First of all, identify triggers. Think about the action that could cause an email. Catalog or demo requests are just a few examples. Find something suitable for your business. Second, your content must be engaging.

Bottom line, while the list can go longer, these five strategies are extremely important in B2B marketing. Sure, based on how unique your company is, you can always develop your own strategies.

However, the above mentioned strategies can generate leads, but they also require consistent work and a proper market or industry analysis. To be successful, a strategy must be consistent and flexible in ideology, as things could change overnight.​