Marketplace

Email marketing is an extremely efficient and effective method of increasing your sales and your customer base, but as with so many other marketing tools, if you don't know what you're doing it can actually cause more harm than good.  Don't ever forget that you are marketing to other companies and not individuals so your messages need to be tailored to your actual audience. When your company is trying to establish a business to business email marketing strategy, there are significant differences in your approach then if you were working on a business to consumer campaign.  

Here are a few of the major points you need to consider in order to create a  more effective and profitable email marketing campaign:

1. Keep it simple. If you were to meet with a prospect in person you would make sure that your pitch were straight to the point. When sending B2B emails you want to achieve the same no nonsense tone.  Their time is valuable and you want to prove to them that you appreciate that fact by getting right down to business in your email, just as you would if you were talking to them in person.

2. Don't forget the "WIIFM" (what's in it for me) approach to your email messages.  Make sure that you clearly articulate what advantages your company can provide to their company and why it just makes sense for them to do business with you.  You have to structure your email message in such as way as to set yourself apart from the competition. 

3. Don't be afraid to ask them for their business. If you don't have a clear call to action such as 'click here  now', for example, they may not do anything.  It's one of the most common mistakes marketers make, they don't ask the prospect to actually take action, they fail to ask for the sale.  Don't make this mistake.

4. To optimize the effectiveness of your email campaign make sure you take the time to learn more about your prospects business and what you can do to help them.  This information can prove extremely helpful when you are composing your email message. By being able to add specific points to your email that would only apply to their particular business you are letting them know that you've taken the time to learn about their company and their needs which will help you build trust with them.

5.  Remember, this is a business that has their own marketing campaigns and they are familiar with all the tricks.  Don't try too hard to 'sell' them.  Keep your message short and on point and then follow up with a firm and clear call to action.

6. Track your results.  You want to keep track of open rates as well as an increase in sales and/ or customers. It's important for you to know which campaigns work and which ones didn't.  This information will allow you to tweak the ones that work and reuse them and start from scratch on some of the less effective campaigns.

Email marketing can be a huge benefit to any business building strategy.  Take the time to research your market before you implement your business to business email marketing plan.  This added step will allow you to make more money and increase your customer base for a very small investment.