Give Your B2B Email Newsletter a Boost

Growing a business-to-business (B2B) email newsletter isn’t easy. For starters, B2B emails notoriously get less engagement. Their average open rate is 15.1 percent compared to 19.7 percent for business-to-consumer (B2C) emails. That doesn’t mean you stop trying to exceed averages and create more buzz for your newsletter.

Here are five ways to do that.

To improve click rates, boost your email deliverability

A prevalent issue causing low click rates is poor email deliverability, which is the number of emails that reach the inbox. Several factors determine your email deliverability, including your email volume and sending frequency, your bounce rate, and spam complaint rate.

“To get more engagement for your B2B email newsletter, start by checking the health of your email list,” says ZeroBounce COO Brian Minick. “We see companies coming to us with a 19 percent bounce rate because they neglected their email list cleaning. Poor-quality data causes your emails to go to spam, but what’s more, your email service provider can block your account because of it. It’s not worth dealing with this problem when you can so easily prevent it,” the email pro adds.

With almost 2 percent of your email list churning every month, remember to validate your contacts every quarter. Thus, you’ll avoid bounces, weed out other subpar data, and give your B2B newsletter a chance to go to the inbox.

Segment your email list to send more relevant content

Once you make sure your email list is fresh, take a closer look at your content. How could you make it better? Your own inbox can inspire you. Ask yourself, what are the emails you tend to open, and what gets you to click?

Oftentimes, you’ll see that the emails you engage with feel especially made for you. The companies that manage to create this personal experience use segmentation. It’s what you should be doing, too. Instead of sending the same email to everyone, use available customer data to create emails tailored to each specific group.

For instance, you could create a segment of people who have just signed up for an account with your company but haven’t made a purchase yet. Another segment could include customers who make purchases sporadically–is there any way you could convert them to a subscription?

It’s easy to get creative with your segments. Communicating with smaller, specific audiences will also make it easier for you to create the right content for them.

Create a welcome email sequence

Your content can be just what your target audience wants, but if your subject line fails to capture it, your email won’t get opened. So, don’t rush to hit Send. Instead, pay close attention to your subject–it needs to convey your message and entice people to click.

“Keep your subject lines brief and relevant, and personalize them. It will grab attention and improve engagement. Also, maximize your preheader text, the little piece of copy following the subject. That valuable space is your last chance to encourage an email open,” says Simon Harper, founder of SRH Design.

The email marketing expert also points out that “B2B email content can be dull and too long.” So, instead of sharing an entire article in your newsletter, “keep it concise and use links to make it easy for subscribers to find your additional content.”