Business to business email marketing differs from consumer direct marketing in various ways. Companies that target other companies with their products and services need to find prospects who have a professional need for the products and services available. If B2B email marketers want to boost their customer numbers, and acquisition marketing campaign offers the best solution.
Creating the perfect campaign of this type requires specialized knowledge and analyzation of results data. Mistakes directly impact financial goals. Consider the five tips below to form a greater understanding of the ideal customer acquisition email campaign and how to design your direct mail offer and follow-up for maximum growth and eventual profit.
Customer Acquisition Data Explained
The phrase customer acquisition data is a marketing industry specific way to describe the email contact information for specific professionals within a company or organization. One of the best ways to get such a collection is to use a reputable list broker who has multiple clean, current, and segmented business mailing lists for rent.
Without such a list broker, you would have to somehow determine all the latest email addresses of the specific people in companies you want to target who can take action on your offer. That process could be ridiculously daunting and get in the way of your business operations and marketing efforts.
Target the Ideal Audience for Your Offer
If you have been in business for a while and have collected a customer information, you have the best source of data for your ideal audience already. An in-house list of your existing customer and client group not only gives you people to contact with new offers but can also help you create a new, more expansive list for the future.
Delve into the demographics of your contacts. What is their position in their company? Where are they geographically? How large is their company and how many employees does it have? What reason do they have to use your product or services? Use the answers to these questions and more to develop a list of criteria for a new list that will help you boost customer numbers.
B2B Customer Acquisition Data Selection Process
Success in direct mail and business to business email marketing depends on the quality of your target audience. Sending 100 emails to people who have already expressed interest in the types of things you offer will be much more effective than sending 10,000 emails to a general list.
The best email list brokers allow you to filter the data by location, industry, number of employees, annual sales figures, and many other characteristics. Once you have narrowed it down your list, get all pertinent contact information for each individual.
Proper Use of B2B Customer Information
While getting the proper list for your B2B email marketing is essential for a high ROI, creating the campaign itself is necessary too. Focus on value to the recipient instead of just pushing your products or services at the start. People and email servers themselves are much more likely to mark a mail as spam if it only advertises.
The customer acquisition process should begin with enticing and actionable subject lines that encourage recipients to open the email. Then, hire a great writer to create compelling copy that focuses on the problems the company may have and the solutions that you can offer. Because the goal is simply boosting customer numbers, this is not necessarily the time to offer a product directly for sale. Instead, share informative or entertaining videos, invite recipients to a free webinar, or give them some report or e-book for free. Include a call to action with the intention of gathering contact information only.
Follow Up Plan for Email Recipients Who Take Action
If you have used the most highly targeted ideal audience list and have sent out a compelling email message, you should have a positive response and more acquisition data to work with. Although getting more potential customers might be the first goal of these business to business email marketing campaigns, you cannot simply put them on a list and wait for next time.
Call back to solidify the contact and begin forging that all-important professional relationship. Move their information to a different list for people further down the sales funnel. Gives the free items you promised, send out your newsletter, and gently push them toward your sales team or appointment setters. Always have a powerful customer management system in place so you know who is at what stage of the process at any given moment.
This entire business builds trust and familiarity. Your brand increases its reputation and allows you to expand marketing efforts more readily. B2B marketers who focus on the five tips described above should be inspired and informed about best practices that will boost your customer numbers now and always.