Well, not to worry, because you’re about to get the ultimate guide to leveraging AI in B2B marketing. You’ll learn how AI is used in the B2B marketing landscape, what role AI can have in the B2B marketing sales funnel, and how AI affects B2B marketing campaigns and processes.

In an attempt to not put the horse before the cart, let’s first talk about what AI is. Artificial intelligence refers to the development of computer systems that can perform repetitive tasks that typically require human intelligence. Think recognizing patterns, learning from data, providing data-driven insights, and making decisions. AI plays a critical role in automating processes, optimizing marketing campaigns, and delivering personalized experiences to target audiences.

How is AI used in B2B marketing?

When you’re talking about B2B marketing, the goal is sales. But how do you get to sales? How do you get the big fish? Traditional B2B marketing suggests you use account-based marketing, lead generation, and personalization. Thanks to AI, there is now a world beyond traditional B2B marketing strategies, so much so that 96% of executives say generative AI is a hot topic of discussion with their boards.

Marketing Analysis

When it comes to B2B marketing, the goal is to create segmentation and personalization with your paid media strategist, CRM strategies, content marketing, and sales tactics. The only real way to close the big deals is to understand who your audience is. Prior to AI, being a data analyst in a B2B SaaS company required a team of people who crunched numbers all day. Now, AI can do all of the hard work on a consistent basis.

Imagine this, you want to understand what time of day a person with a specific job title clicks on your ads, visits the page, and hits “request a demo.” Now, instead of relying on dashboards built into Salesforce to provide you with actionable insights, you can automate the entire process. No more surveys and customer interviews. Now, you can get the high-quality data you need to plan out marketing strategies that will actually work.

This means less money spent on ads, higher ROAS, and clients with a longer LTV. AI can unlock data that is necessary in B2B marketing, such as cohorts that are likely to schedule a demo, which online customer is more likely to engage, and what times you need the B2B customer to engage to have the highest success rate.

Content generation

B2B marketers tend to focus on one thing for brand awareness: content, content, content. Why? Because in B2B, brand awareness means B2B sales. Content is king because it’s in everything you present to your potential customers.

As a B2B marketer, you’re constantly churning out marketing content such as blogs, ebooks, ad copy, etc. It’s the way your B2B business gets discovered. Turning to an AI platform such as ChatGPT can significantly help your productivity and can even inspire new ideas. Leverage generative AI tools to personalize your high-quality content, feed it cohorts to come up with ad copy, or even use it to write your blogs (just remember to add a human touch).

B2B audience insights & predicting analytics

AI-driven tools can analyze vast amounts of data to gain customer insights into buyer behavior, preferences, and demographics. By harnessing these insights, B2B marketers can create highly targeted and personalized content, improving the chances of engagement and conversion.

AI algorithms can predict future trends and behaviors based on historical data. In B2B marketing, predictive analytics help identify potential leads and guide sales teams toward the most promising prospects.

Essentially, this provides data analysis at scale. AI has the capacity to process and analyze vast volumes of data far more quickly and accurately than humans can. This includes data from various sources, such as website interactions, social media engagement, email interactions, and historical sales data. By aggregating and analyzing this data, AI can uncover patterns and trends that might go unnoticed through manual analysis.

What is the role of AI in the B2B sales funnel?

B2B is all about sales, right? B2B marketing creates a B2B sales funnel. The funnel gets filled with prospects, whether from organic traffic, paid media, or outbound calls; there is a way to fill your sales pipeline with more qualified leads that will hopefully turn into customers.

Get personalized

The name of the game is prospecting. But how can you ever really know what a prospective buyer wants to see? AI can analyze individual customer preferences and behavior to personalize content recommendations. This goes beyond simply addressing the recipient by name; it involves tailoring the entire content experience to match a customer’s interests and needs. This kind of personalization at scale allows the sales team to deliver content and recommendations to a large audience, fostering stronger connections with potential clients.

Improve sales data analytics

Thanks to predictive analytics, AI can gather deep insights into customer behavior and preferences to help your team make better decisions about how to approach each interaction. Furthermore, the problem of never having clean data to make those decisions, consider it gone.

AI-powered tools can automatically clean and enrich sales data. This includes removing duplicate entries, standardizing data formats, and filling in missing information. Clean and enriched data ensures that sales teams are working with accurate and complete information.

AI can also provide your B2B sales team with forecasting models that use historical sales data, market trends, and other relevant factors to predict future sales performance accurately. These forecasts help businesses plan strategy, allocate resources, and set realistic sales targets.

Qualify leads and lead scoring

What is the likelihood that a prospective lead will actually convert? It’s a trick question, but even if you think you know, you never really know. Therefore, you could be spending time on a prospect that could be wasted time. AI can help when it comes to lead scoring and qualifying promising leads. How? AI algorithms can automatically score and prioritize high-quality leads based on their likelihood to convert. This ensures that sales teams focus their efforts on leads with the highest potential, increasing efficiency and conversion rates.

To take it one step further, AI can track leads and prospects through the sales funnel, providing insights into where leads are getting stuck or dropping off. This information guides marketing efforts to optimize the sales process and improve conversion rates.

How does AI affect B2B marketing processes?

So now we know AI is powerful. But how powerful? 58% of marketers whose companies use generative AI for content creation said increased performance is the top benefit. That means, by using AI, the marketing processes in your company can improve tremendously.

Scale

Scaling your company is hard work. Luckily, with AI, scale isn’t a problem like it used to be. The time that it would take a team to complete a task can simply be cut in half. Your AI software can consume far more information than a single human or marketing team. It can analyze thousands of leads at a time, create endless personalized messages, and predict trends you need to get ahead.

Continuous optimization

Artificial Intelligence is just that: computer learning. The algorithms are constantly evolving, learning, and getting better. AI can optimize paid media, leaky funnels, drop-off points, and more by consistently getting better at what it does. If you leverage AI, you’ll be able to stay ahead of the curve before you even realize you’re behind it.

Artificial Intelligence is not just a buzzword; it’s a transformative force in the world of B2B marketing. From refining customer insights to automating processes and enhancing the efficiency of sales teams, AI empowers businesses to stay competitive and drive growth. As AI continues to evolve, its role in B2B marketing will only become more significant. Embracing this technology and harnessing its capabilities is no longer an option but a necessity for businesses looking to thrive in the digital age. So, start exploring the world of AI in B2B marketing today, and prepare to reap the rewards of innovation and progress.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Leveraging AI in B2B Marketing appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

What is product virality?

At its core, a “viral product” can be any offering—whether it’s a mobile app, software solutions, consumer goods, or an e-commerce item—that spreads like wildfire throughout its target audience. What sets a viral product apart is its remarkable ability to grow organically with minimal investment in traditional marketing campaigns. Instead, it thrives on a self-propagating loop, where one customer shares the product with their network, who then do the same, creating a viral marketing domino effect.

In today’s fiercely competitive market, the significance of viral products cannot be overstated. They offer a gateway to cost-effective marketing and can revolutionize the way businesses acquire customers. Understanding and harnessing the power of product virality can give your brand a distinct edge, allowing you to stand out in a crowded digital landscape.

The benefits of going viral products

At its core, creating a viral product is a marketing strategy with the goal being a healthy custom acquisition funnel.

Unlocking cost-effective marketing

One of the most compelling benefits of a viral product is its ability to supercharge your marketing efforts while significantly reducing costs. Traditional marketing strategies often require substantial budgets for campaigns, but a viral product takes a different route.

Imagine this: your product is so engaging and valuable that users can’t resist sharing it with their friends, family, and colleagues. Each time a user shares your product, it’s like a mini-marketing campaign initiated by your satisfied customers, and it doesn’t cost you a dime. This organic word-of-mouth marketing can have a profound impact on your brand’s visibility and reach.

The three tiers of the marketing funnel

To understand the true power of viral products in marketing, you have to understand the three tiers of a marketing funnel

Top of Funnel (Awareness): At the top of the funnel, the goal is to create brand awareness and introduce your product to potential customers. This is often achieved through traditional marketing channels such as digital ads. However, viral products have the unique ability to generate buzz without the need for extensive ad spend. When people start talking about your product, it naturally enters the awareness stage for a broader audience.

Middle of Funnel (Consideration): In the middle of the funnel, individuals who have heard about your product in passing start showing interest and want to learn more. Viral products excel here because they pique curiosity and capture the attention of those who’ve heard about the product through word of mouth or social media. The “cool factor” of a viral product can make it a hot topic of conversation and exploration.

Bottom of Funnel (Conversion): The bottom of the funnel is where the magic happens – potential customers take action and acquire your product. Viral products, by their very nature, have the potential to drive more conversions because they’ve already received significant exposure and validation from peers. When users see that their friends are enjoying a product, they’re more likely to make a purchase or sign up, leading to a higher average conversion rate.

In essence, viral products grease the wheels of the marketing funnel, making each stage more efficient and cost-effective. They create a ripple effect that expands your reach, engages potential customers, and ultimately drives company growth.

An example of product virality: A case study

Now that we’ve established what product virality is and its significance in the world of marketing, it’s time to dive into real-world examples of products and companies that have achieved viral growth. Our focus today is on a social media platform that needs no introduction: TikTok.

TikTok: A viral phenomenon

TikTok, the short-form video platform, took the world by storm in recent years, demonstrating the remarkable power of viral growth. What started as a relatively obscure app transformed into a global sensation, with over a billion monthly active users.

Analyzing the success

So, what can we learn from TikTok’s incredible journey to true virality? Let’s break down some key aspects:

• Simplicity and accessibility: TikTok simplified the video creation process, making it easy for anyone to create and share content. This accessibility encouraged a broad user base to participate.
• Algorithmic magic: TikTok’s recommendation algorithm was finely tuned to showcase content that users would enjoy. As users engaged with viral videos, the algorithm learned their preferences, resulting in a personalized feed. This kept users coming back for more, increasing engagement and virality.
• Inherent shareability: TikTok’s design promotes sharing. Users can easily share videos within the app or on other social media platforms, extending the reach of content beyond TikTok itself.
• User-generated challenges: TikTok popularized challenges and trends that encouraged users to create their unique spin on a particular theme. This not only engaged existing users but also attracted new ones eager to join the fun.
• Cross-platform integration: TikTok seamlessly integrated with other social media platforms, allowing users to share their TikTok content on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This cross-platform integration multiplied the exposure and virality potential.

Lessons for achieving virality

The TikTok success story provides valuable lessons for those aspiring to achieve product virality:

• Simplicity matters: Make your product easy to use and accessible to a broad audience.
• Leverage algorithms: Develop algorithms that understand user behavior and deliver personalized experiences.
• Foster shareability: Encourage users to share your product or content with others.
• Embrace trends: Keep an eye on industry trends and adapt your products to align with them.
• Cross-promotion: Explore opportunities for cross-platform integration to expand your product’s reach.

TikTok’s journey from obscurity to worldwide acclaim demonstrates that product virality isn’t limited to a select few. With the right strategies and an understanding of user behavior, any product can spark a viral phenomenon.

Principles and strategies for viral product design

Creating a product that goes viral isn’t a stroke of luck; it’s a result of careful planning, strategic thinking, and a deep understanding of your target audience.

What makes a product go viral?

• Solve a real problem: Every viral product begins by addressing a genuine need or problem. It’s not enough to create something entertaining; your product should provide tangible value to its users. This forms the foundation of its virality.
• Know your audience: Understanding your target audience is paramount. What are their pain points, desires, and preferences? Tailor your product to resonate with your audience on a personal level.
• Simple and intuitive: Viral products are often intuitive and easy to use. Complex and convoluted user experiences can deter users from sharing. Keep it simple, and ensure that users can navigate your product effortlessly.
• Gamify and incentivize: Gamification and incentives can be powerful tools. Encourage users to engage with your product by adding elements of fun or by offering rewards for sharing or reaching specific milestones.
• Design for mobile: With the rise of mobile usage, it’s essential to ensure that your product is mobile-friendly. A seamless mobile experience can significantly boost the shareability of your product.

The importance of shareability

Shareability is the linchpin of viral product design. It’s what allows your users to become ambassadors for your product, spreading the word far and wide.

Here’s how to optimize for shareability:

• Social integration: Make it effortless for users to share your product on various social media platforms. Implement social sharing buttons and ensure that shared content looks appealing on social feeds.
• Incentivize sharing: Offer incentives or rewards for users who refer others to your product. This can include discounts, exclusive content, or early access.
• Create shareable content: If your product involves content creation, enable users to easily generate and share their content within your platform and beyond. User-generated content can have a significant viral impact.
• Leverage user networks: Encourage users to invite their friends or contacts to join your platform. This network effect can lead to exponential growth.
• Harness trends: Stay attuned to current trends and cultural moments. Aligning your product with trending topics can make it more shareable and relevant.

Striking a balance

While designing for virality, it’s essential to strike a balance between short-term and long-term success. Some strategies may lead to quick spikes in user growth, but sustaining virality over time requires a product that consistently delivers value and engages users. Maintain a user-centric approach, gather feedback, and iterate on your product to enhance the user experience continuously.

Monitoring and optimizing with data analytics

If you’ve created a viral product, you’re not done when the product is launched. Data analytics plays a pivotal role in not only monitoring the virality of your product but also optimizing it for sustained growth.

Understanding the virality metrics

To effectively measure and optimize product virality, you need to focus on specific metrics and insights. Here are key metrics and considerations:

• Viral coefficient (K-factor): This metric measures the rate at which your users invite others to join your product. A K-factor greater than 1 indicates viral growth. Continuously monitor and analyze this coefficient.
• Referral tracking: Track the source of referrals. Understand where your new users are coming from and which channels are the most effective for generating viral growth.
• Conversion rates: Examine the percent conversion rates at different stages of the viral loop. Where are users dropping off, and what can be done to improve the rate of conversion?
• User behavior: Analyze user behavior data to gain insights into how users engage with your product. Identify patterns and areas for improvement.
• Network effects: Understand how network effects are influencing your product’s growth. Analyze how users are connected and how those connections contribute to virality.

Post-launch insights

Post-launch, data analytics continues to be a valuable resource. Some key insights to gather include:

• User acquisition: Track how users are finding your product and which channels are driving the most growth. Allocate resources to the most effective channels.
• User engagement: Monitor user engagement and retention. A viral product is one that not only acquires users but keeps them actively engaged over time.
• Demographic analysis: Understand the demographics of your user base. This information can help tailor your marketing efforts and virality strategies to specific audience segments.
• Feedback loop: Create a feedback loop that incorporates user insights into product development. When users see that their feedback leads to improvements, they are more likely to become advocates.

Remember, virality and viral growth is not just about creating a product; it’s about creating a movement and community. You have to create a valuable and sustainable experience for your users. Encourage them to talk about your product, spread the word, and become advocates. Incorporate the strategies, principles, and ethical considerations discussed in this guide into your product development efforts. Product virality is a dynamic force that can propel your business to new heights, and by applying these insights, you’ll be well on your way to harnessing its full potential.

The post Cultivating Product Virality: Designing a viral product that drives growth appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

So what does that have to do with Business-to-Business, or B2B, marketing?

Traditional B2B marketing is rooted in a single goal: getting leads at all costs. Leads fuel the sales cycle, which, in turn, leads to a healthy revenue pipeline. Unfortunately, outside of outbound outreach, the typical sales team will look to marketing to feed their pipeline. That leaves marketers with a huge gap to fill; so much so that 78% of a marketer’s success is measured by how much they influence the overall sales pipeline.

To fill this gap, marketers turn to the traditional strategies used over and over again in B2B marketing: account-based marketing (ABM), research-based marketing, and nurture campaign marketing. However, community is somewhat of an untapped resource when it comes to B2B marketing.

Introducing Community-Based B2B Marketing (CBM)

Don’t worry about new acronyms, this one is exactly what it sounds like. A B2B community is simply a group of people or businesses that have a common goal, focus, or problem that they are working on. When it comes to B2B marketing, a community can span from people with the same job titles that have run into similar problems and communicate through a group on Linkedin, to a TikTok community that is learning how to DIY home projects from a business that provides the services. The point being, all of these people have a problem they are facing and they lean on their community to find solutions.

B2B community marketing can come in all different forms. Communities can happen via Slack, Discord, TikTok, or Whatsapp, or even in person at panels, lectures, and events. However they gather, B2B companies that are looking for new ways to penetrate their market need to insert themselves into the conversation wherever their community is.

What are the benefits of a B2B Community for the business?

1. Fosters lead generation and upsell: When you build a community that has current clients, potential clients, or even cold audiences, it’s an opportunity for the business to help the clientele understand the value of the product. Rather than selling a product directly, you allow the community to lean on each other and learn about the product from one another.
2. Help the audience: Most consumers looking for a B2B solution have a problem that they need solving, this is the opportunity to be helpful. Rather than simply selling a product, take this as an opportunity to educate the potential customer on the benefits, and upsell current clients on what’s coming next.
3. Easy way to gain insight: B2B businesses need to turn to NPS surveys, customer interviews, or even incentives to get real data from their customers. Communities are a way to gather intel about the client challenges, goals, and product information.

What are the benefits of a B2B Community for the consumer?

1. Knowledge: Communities take the opportunity to gain knowledge from one another. If a community is fostered specifically around a product or a business, the people in that community will likely turn to gain knowledge.
2. Networking: In the B2B world, networking is crucial. People with similar interests, job titles, companies, etc. always want to network and “be in the know.” A community, especially an online community, helps people to be able to network with whomever and whenever they want.
3. Innovation: Communities thrive off of ideas. Sharing ideas within the community allows the participants to innovate within their own respective roles.

Traditional B2B Strategy vs. Community B2B Strategy

To understand the power of community in B2B marketing, let’s remember the basics:

What is lead generation in B2B?

The goal of B2B lead generation is to allow other businesses to remember your brand, understand the value it can bring to their business, and convert them into customers. Marketers want to be able to reach decision makers who have the power to act, drive engagement with those audiences, and build relationships along the way.

Traditional B2B Strategy:

Traditionally, B2B marketing has relied on a variety of strategies to reach potential customers and promote products or services. The traditional marketing and sales funnel tracks the various stages of a revenue opportunity, when someone becomes a lead, an opportunity and eventually either a closed/won or closed/lost deal. The marketing team focuses on getting as many qualified leads as possible into the top of the funnel. The typical strategies to get leads through the funnel include:

Paid media:

From Linkedin to Google Search, B2B companies will pour hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars into digital advertising every year in the hopes of gaining a healthy pipeline. Though it can be successful, it takes months of experimentation, targeting refinement, and creative A/B testing to get a cost per customer acquisition down, and revenue up. Most companies will likely have to hire outside agencies to be able to compete.

Drip or Nurture Campaigns:

B2B marketers will send nurture campaigns to leads that have gone cold to get them to turn into paying customers. Though email marketing might be considered the cornerstone of B2B marketing, companies would need to build teams around email marketing specifically to become successful.

Expos or Trade Shows:

Trade shows and exhibitions are a popular way for B2B companies to showcase their products and services to a large number of potential customers in one place. However, trade shows are a huge expense and don’t often lead to many qualified leads.

The bottom line is, these things all take time and money.

In 2022, $26 billion was spent on US-based B2B marketing and by the end of 2023, that number will be over $30 billion. So, short of spending millions of dollars to compete, how will B2B companies compete?

Community B2B Strategy:

Community B2B marketing is a more recent approach that focuses on building and nurturing relationships with potential customers through online communities and social media. This approach emphasizes engagement and connection with potential customers, rather than simply promoting products or services. Potential customers are tired of being sold products, they want to understand value

Before purchasing a product, 27% of potential customers use dedicated brand communities to research the product.

Some of the key strategies used in community B2B marketing include:

Online communities:

Many B2B companies are now using online communities, such as forums, TikTok, LinkedIn groups, and Facebook groups, to connect with potential customers and answer their questions, offer advice, and build relationships. Community B2B marketing can be a cost-effective way to reach and engage with potential customers, especially if you are targeting a specific industry or geographic region.

Social media:

B2B companies are also using social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to engage with potential customers and build their brand. Online communities and social media platforms have a much larger reach than traditional B2B marketing tactics, making it easier to connect with a wider audience and get better engagement.

Content marketing:

Community B2B marketers often use content marketing tactics such as blogging, podcasting, and creating videos to provide valuable information to potential customers and build relationships with them. By providing valuable insight, brands can build personal relationships with potential customers.

What steps should you take to Build a B2B Community?

Now the fun part, how to actually build a B2B community:

Figure out the “why”:

B2B communities need to have a purpose and be relevant. The community needs to bring value, be engaging, and keep your audience hooked. Figure out what you want the community to gain by joining. Is it an educational TikTok channel that shows people how to do something? Is it a Facebook or Linkedin group that helps solve work-related issues? Whatever the purpose is, a clear one will leave participants always wanting more from the brand.

Understand the goals:

Sure, a community is fun, but at the same time it is built to not only educate an audience but to drive sales. So, when building a B2B community it is important to keep KPIs in mind. What should the community achieve? It can be as simple as email signs up, but the goal has the be clear in order for the company to gain value as well.

Pick the platform:

Where is the conversation going to take place? Social media, podcasts, blogs, and forums are all options. The first thing to look for is where your potential customers hang out online. From there, build a relationship on that platform which can later expand to other platforms as well.

Invite the champions:

The best thing about building a B2B community is inviting the people! You can invite current clients, ideal clients, potential clients, and more. Create a profile of who the ideal member is and recruit the right prospects. This way, there is already a pool of potential customers to help marketing efforts.

Foster engagement:

Driving engagement is the most important thing about a community. Creating one and never engaging isn’t an option. It is up to the brand to engage with the community, answer questions, drive innovation, and become a go-to in the industry.

Promote:

Inviting members, asking for referrals, and engaging influencer marketing are all a part of promoting a B2B community. Incorporate the community into the brand and help drive community growth. A community can act as an asset for the brand, so it’s important to leverage it throughout the marketing funnel.

Layering B2B community marketing into an existing marketing strategy can set any brand up for success when it comes to lead generation. B2B communities are an essential way for businesses to connect with their target audience, improve customer engagement and acquisition, and actually bring value to their customers. Growing a B2B community helps brands gain first-hand feedback, retention, and an understanding of their user base. At their core, community members are brand ambassadors that will fuel your B2B lead generation!

The post The Next Stage of B2B Lead Gen: The Role of Community appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

Let’s get the most important question out of the way, what is email marketing? Email marketing, simply put, is marketing that is sent to potential or existing customers in your database. Historically, email marketing is one of the most successful marketing techniques you can use in order to gain traction to your website or app, convert warm leads into sales, or nurture leads with educational, informative, and relevant content about your business. Email marketing is so widely utilized that its revenue is set to hit $11 billion dollars by 2023. The concept of email marketing is top of mind for every marketer, but how can you use it to scale sales and increase your return on investment?

TL;DR: 

• Get started with email marketing by figuring out your goals, objectives, and metrics you want to measure.
• The benefits of email marketing include a higher return rate, more engagement, and a bigger audience.
• Have a holistic approach to email marketing that includes identifying your audience, creating an email list, personalizing the emails, and creating nurture campaigns.
• Email marketing gives you more bang for your buck than paid media.
• Segment your audience and A/B test your emails to know what works best and be able to scale.
• Keep optimizing your email marketing based on metrics and data.
• Choose the right email marketing system that includes automation and learning.

Getting started with email marketing

To get started with email marketing, the primary objective is to set goals and KPIs. Meaning, what do you want to get out of your email marketing campaigns?

For example, if your company drives revenue through advertising dollars, your email marketing objective would be to drive website traffic. Thus, you will likely promote articles or blogs that are performing well on your website.

On the contrary, if you run an e-commerce website, your objective might be to drive sales so your email marketing campaigns would reflect that goal by promoting new products or discounts.

Regardless of what industry you are in, setting these goals and objectives is imperative to well-performing emails that you can measure and scale further.

What metrics are important when it comes to email marketing:

1. Open rate: Open rate refers to the percentage of people who opened the email you have sent to them. Typically, 20% or higher is considered a good open rate.

2. Bounce rate: Bounce rate can act as a benchmark for the health of your email marketing list. The higher the bounce rate, the more likely that your list has outdated information and needs to be reviewed. A bounce rate of 2% or lower is ideal.

3. Unsub rate: Unsubscribe rate acts as an opportunity for learning and analysis. If your unsubscribe rate is high you can assume that the information being sent wasn’t relevant to the audience, and adjust messaging accordingly for your next email.

4. Click through rate: Click through rate or CTR or click-to-open ratio refers to the percentage of people that found your email relevant enough to click into and go to your desired landing page. A good CTR is between 2-5%.

5. Conversion rate: Likely the most important factor in email marketing is the conversion rate which refers to the rate of people who took a desired action towards the goal that you set for your campaigns (i.e website traffic or a purchase). This number indicates how effective the email was and what your return on investment is. Typically 2-5% is seen as a good conversion rate for email marketing campaigns.

The benefits of email marketing

As a digital marketer, you’re likely exploring the “latest and greatest” strategies to scale your business or that of your clients. Figuring out new Tik Tok ad strategies, optimizing Facebook campaigns, and good ‘ole Google will certainly help you but don’t discount the oldest strategy you have: email.

1. Email marketing has the highest ROI ($36 for every $1 spent) than any other marketing strategy. If you’re working with a smaller budget, email marketing is the best choice for a high ROI. In lieu of testing paid media channels, you can test email first and see a positive result. Once you start scaling, you can explore other channels as well.
2. As of 2021, 37% of companies have increased their email marketing budget after seeing the ROI of their campaigns. Meaning companies are seeing more value from email marketing and want to continue to scale this channel.
3. 58% of people check their email first thing in the morning, compared to 14% check social media first. If people check their emails before anything else, you might want to leverage this data in order to understand when to send emails to your email list. Testing timing is one of the best ways to gauge results.
4. 79% of marketers consider email to be one of the top three most effective marketing channels. Meaning they put more effort and higher budgets into their email marketing campaigns because they offer a higher ROI.
5. There are 4 billion people that use their email everyday. In comparison to other marketing channels, email has the most people checking in every single day which can boost the engagement rate and the effectiveness of your email marketing.

How to do email marketing

Now that we’ve defined email marketing and gone through the benefits, let’s explore how to actually do it. In order to have an effective email marketing strategy, there are 5 keys points you have to consider before you hit “send”:

Identify the audience:

Who is your target audience? Creating an email marketing strategy comes down to understanding what your ICP (ideal customer profile) looks like. The best way to do this is to create personas based on the customers or data you already have, or, if you don’t have data, create a competitive analysis and assume your ICP in order to test relevant copy and creatives. Analyze the data and identify your most high-value customers or the highest lifetime value customers. Based on the data, build groups of customers in your email list to target with specific, relevant messaging, to get this customer through the funnel and hit your goal.

Build an email list:

If you are thinking about purchasing email lists, don’t. Instead, try opt-in forms and thought leadership resources. Opt-in forms are a great way to present your website visitor or potential customer with a discount or a good piece of content in order to get their email address. An opt-in form can be a pop-up, newsletter sign-up, or giveaway. On the other hand, thought leadership is gated content such as an eBook, Whitepaper, Webinar, or infographic that is a high-value piece of content users are highly likely to download. Once those emails are captured, enter them into your list for future email marketing campaigns.

Create a template:

There are tons of email templates all over the internet that “look good.” but it’s important to ask, “Are they relevant to your ICP?” When creating a template, make sure to do research and have a competitive analysis ready to go. You can test different email templates to see which work best and scale from there. The most important thing to keep in mind is that your email template should be consistent with your branding and design guidelines.

Personalize copy:

When your template is ready and it’s time to write copy, personalization is one of the most important aspects of email marketing. Personalized emails allow your users to feel like the content is relevant to them, in fact, 66% of consumers expect brands to provide a tailored experience for them. Based on this information, the more personalized you get with your messaging based on ICP groups, the better your ROI will likely be.

Set up nurture campaigns:

The real goal of email marketing is user engagement. A nurture campaign is a string of emails based on either a time or a specific event that triggers emails to be sent. Typically time-based emails get sent every other day or once a week, while event-based emails are triggered by a specific action someone takes. For example, if someone downloads a piece of content from your website, they enter into a nurture campaign that sends them emails based on your parameters. This keeps your content at top of mind for them and drives them to the bottom of the funnel.

Let’s strategize: Why is email marketing important?

When to use email marketing versus other marketing strategies

When talking about marketing strategies, you can look at the statistics and decide that one method is better than the other. In reality, it’s not better, it’s just different. Social media marketing is the relatively “new kid on the block” and it works. However, if you’re working with a strict budget email marketing could give you more bang for your buck.

Let’s create this baseline to measure email marketing vs. social media marketing:

• Email marketing: 2,000 people will open your email and see your content
• Facebook ads: 300 people will see your content

In terms of reach, it’s clear that email is the winner, but is that all there is to it?

Rather than picking email marketing over social media marketing, consider using both strategies in order to create an omni-channel experience for your audience. Target your Facebook audience with relevant content that drives engagement and email capture, then enter that warm lead into your email list and follow up with nurture campaigns.

Build an email marketing strategy with audience and segmentation

Now that you’ve gotten the basics down and you know your audience, have your email list, and understand your goals, it’s time to start marketing. To build an email marketing strategy that is truly successful and scalable, you have to be able to understand your audience and give them high-value content.

One generic email won’t work for your entire audience, right? So you need to break up your email list through segmentation, personalization of the emails, and A/B Testing in order to scale.

Segmentation:

Segmentation is the number one tool you have for personalization when it comes to sending emails. You can divide your email list into cohorts (or groups) based on criteria set by your company. You can segment audiences based on purchases, time on site, interests, location, and more. Audience segmentation gives you the ability to deliver relevant content to these cohorts to get them to convert.

Based on the goal you’ve set for your email marketing campaign, you can segment down your audience even further to either content-driven emails or behavior-driven emails. Content-driven means the audience has interacted with your website or product while behavior-driven means they’ve taken an action. The more segmented your audience is, the more likely they are to convert into a customer.

Personalization:

When segmentation is complete, you’ll want to personalize your emails to the person you’re sending them to. This can be as simple as adding a token with their name, or more complex as adding a token of data-driven behavior. Personalization essentially leverages the data you have on a cohort group or on an individual.

If you look at your data and understand that a cohort always clicks on X, your email should be personalized enough to have them take that action again. This kind of tailor-made approach to email marketing results in a higher open rate, CTR, and conversion rate.

A/B Test:

What is A/B Testing?

It’s a method of splitting the email into 2 different versions and sending them to 2 different sample groups from your email list. A/B Testing will be able to show you how successful your copy, creative, or subject line is. Then, the “winning” email will be sent to the rest of your email list or cohorts.

For example, let’s say the cohort group you want to send the email to has 5,000 people and you want to know if a CTA that says “learn more” is more successful than a CTA that says “start now.” You will want to create two email templates in which the only difference is the CTA, send that split test to 500 people who get one CTA, and 500 get another, then the winning email will be sent to the 4,000 remaining people.

A/B Testing can and should be done with copy, images, CTAs, and content. As you learn more about what certain audiences want to see, you’ll be able to scale your email marketing to get conversions every time you send an email.

Tips and tricks for a successful email marketing campaigns

What makes a successful email marketing campaign? To be honest, it’s a lot of testing and optimization. When you start sending your emails, you’ll always want to tweak the following:

Image: Make sure the image (or creative) used in your campaign matches the company brand guidelines. It needs to be recognizable, catchy, and relevant. Email images should also be optimized for whatever device the person is using (iOS, Android, etc.)

Copy: Stick to a relevant topic based on your cohorts, and make sure the copy is relevant and informative. Do not send emails within generic copy as it will result in unsubscribes.

Time: When to send emails is something that you’re going to have to test over and over again, but make sure you optimize send time for the highest open rate.

CTA: Test multiple CTAs to ensure they are relevant to your audience and convert well.

Optimization: Your emails should always be optimized. If you see a changing trend, new design, or better analytics through data, you’ll want to optimize emails to reflect that.

How to do email marketing: Tools for Success

Implement email marketing automation

Another benefit to email marketing: the tools are very affordable. A good email marketing system will provide you with a plethora of metrics and tools within itself that give you a great bang for your buck. Most email platforms come equipped with marketing tools that allow you to track open rates, bounce rates, unsubscribes, CTRs and so much more. These metrics allow you to make informed decisions about your email marketing.

What’s even better is that most tools today come with marketing automation tools built in. Automation allows you to set up drip campaigns, triggers based on time and event, and integrations that allow for an omnichannel experience.

Here are the top 5 email marketing platforms you can use today:

1. Klayvio
   1. Best for e-commerce and DTC companies. Klaviyo allows you to personalize emails, see metrics, run A/B tests automatically, and set up behavior-based automation.
2. Hubspot
   1. Best for all industries, Hubspot is an email marketing tool that allows you to efficiently create, personalize, and optimize marketing emails that feel and look professional without designers or IT.
3. Constant Contact
   1. Best for small businesses, Constant Contact has everything a small business needs to create effective campaigns, including affordable plans and easy-to-use tools.
4. Salesforce Marketing Cloud
   1. Best for B2B, Salesforce marketing cloud allows you to automate emails, see metrics and connect seamlessly with your Salesforce CRM for further insights.
5. Campaign Monitor
   1. Best for all industries that are relatively new to email marketing. Campaign Monitor offers simple-to-use email campaigns that grow engagement.

Analyze, learn and scale

Email marketing comes down to understanding your audience better with every email you send. When you start email marketing, you’re first trying to analyze the goals and KPIs you want to set and learn from there. With each email, A/B test, and segmentation, take that data into account and learn what your audience wants to see. Once you’re able to understand what the customer wants and which emails are working, you’ll be able to scale email marketing infinitely.

If you’re looking for an email marketing agency that can help set up an email campaign that will optimize your existing customer journey or increase customer acquisition, then get in touch with our team!

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