B2B email marketing: newsletter success story

Email marketing in B2B is one of the best channels for building loyalty with current and prospective customers. In fact, according to Acrelia News’ 2022 email marketing study, 46% of respondents use this method to retain their databases.

However, maintaining or increasing subscription, open, or click-through rates is difficult, especially when starting without a database. We’ve achieved just that for one of our clients: increasing newsletter subscribers while maintaining open rates.

In this case, the audience was as follows:

• Type: B2B.
• Target audience profession: engineers, production managers and technicians.
• Sector: renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions.

The challenge

We had two main barriers to overcome:

• Building and qualifying a database virtually from scratch. The newsletter was initially sent only to customers who were interested and to whom we had permission to send marketing communications, but we wanted to gain more brand awareness and visibility among our potential customers.
• Generating useful and relevant content for our audience on a recurring basis is one of the biggest challenges in the industrial or B2B sectors, as we’ve discussed in other articles (such as Keys to Industrial B2B Marketing). It’s crucial that, from the outset of the client-agency relationship, it’s clear that the client possesses the most information and content. In fact, ideally, the client should be the one creating this type of content. For the relationship to function effectively and achieve the desired objectives, several members of each team should be involved in writing the more technical content.

Goals for B2B email marketing

The main goal of the newsletter was to show our buyer persona that we had the know-how, experience, renewable energy solutions and professional talent to achieve any of the energy efficiency goals needed in production plants, especially among manufacturing companies.

Solution offered

We needed to activate this communication channel as soon as possible to start generating results. For this reason, we proposed two phases, both long-term:

• The first phase. This is the success story we’re showing you. At this stage, we offer a newsletter as a solution, featuring technical content segmented by categories or topics, but without targeting any specific sector or company. This way, with each newsletter, we can learn what content is most interesting to our users.
• The second phase involves segmenting the newsletter based on the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and even by the stage of each contact’s lifecycle. Sending a newsletter to a client (where you can offer content tailored to the service they’ve purchased) is not the same as sending one to a prospect (who likely doesn’t yet know what type of solution is right for them). This phase requires a high level of engagement with the audience and the creation of ad-hoc content for each audience segment.

We designed a newsletter that was “as balanced as possible” from a marketing perspective. In other words:

• Creating content for SEO: this allows us, in addition to branding, to provide solutions to those people who are looking for a specific solution to a problem.
• “Dark” technical content. This is content provided by sales agents, sales managers, or engineers from the client that is essential for the sector but doesn’t necessarily generate online searches. This helps us generate demand.
• Offer. In this case, we can’t offer prices or discounts through the newsletter, given the industry we’re in. Therefore, the offer would always be training: a key aspect of our buyer persona. Each newsletter would include downloadable training content, such as a webinar, PDF guide, report, etc.
• Maintain a sending frequency of once a month. Although this frequency may seem infrequent, in this sector, quality is more important than quantity. In addition to receiving these emails, they are interspersed with others, such as webinar announcements. This way, we maintain contact several times a month in a natural and organic manner.

Results achieved

Newsletter subscribers, for 17 months (September 2021 – February 2023):

• Growth of 143% from 2021 to 2022
• Growth of 31.01% from 2022 to 2023
• The average monthly growth in enrollments is 15%.

We maintain an average open rate of 32.96% and an average CTR (clicks/opens) of 25.98%. On occasion, we even achieve a CTR exceeding 55%.

Features that have guaranteed us a better user experience in your emails

It’s vital that, in addition to controlling the content included in each email, we ensure our audience views it correctly regardless of the device they use. Below are the aspects we at SHERIDAN review in every email we send:

Size and weight for B2B email marketing

The size of the images should be as small as possible to reduce loading time (around 100kb-150kb).

In total, the email should not weigh more than 500 kbs.

ALT text is added to all images in case they don’t load quickly, so the user can see a description of what the image would contain.

Formats

We’ll keep the width to 600px. The height will depend on the design and content you want to include. Keep in mind that when an email is too long, some email clients (like Gmail) may truncate the message, so there’s a risk that the content won’t be fully visible.

Email client compatibility

With the number of devices and email clients that exist today, it is increasingly difficult to ensure that our email will look good on all of them.

If your email marketing platform allows it, identify the email clients your subscribers use most and ensure it displays correctly in those. Then, optimize it for the rest.

HubSpot, for example, has a preview tool that helps us visualize how our email would look on different platforms and/or devices.

Don’t forget the mobile version

Have you ever received an email where some elements appear very small or misconfigured? Something similar to what you can see in the screenshot below:

That’s because the design may have become misaligned in the mobile version. Depending on your industry, most users who receive the newsletter may view it on their mobile devices before they view it on computers.

Dark Mode

More and more users are configuring their screens to dark mode, and some images or text aren’t displaying correctly. For example, in this email, the logo should fill the entire width in white.

GDPR, always active

The legal information must be included at the bottom of each email, and users must be able to unsubscribe or modify their subscription. Failure to do so may result in your email being marked as spam.

Set goals

Why are you sending a newsletter? Why should it interest your audience? What do you want them to do with the information they receive? These are questions you should ask yourself before sending any newsletter.

In our case, each newsletter block had a specific objective. Generally, we asked readers to visit an article or register to download a document.

Want to achieve great results with your B2B email marketing campaigns? It’s always a good idea to have an agency help you get them!

Request your free consultation with our experts right here

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