When the global pandemic hit in 2020, businesses had to shift face-to-face interactions to digital methods in order to stay in touch with their customers. One alternative channel for many marketers has been email and in the B2B world, it’s a fantastic tool to communicate with your audience. Recently, 40% of B2B marketers said in a survey that email newsletters are critical to the success of their content marketing plan. However, it’s not easy to ensure your emails get opened always and that the desired action is taken by the receiver.

In this blog post, we break down the key B2B marketing strategies for 2021 so you can stay ahead of the curve and improve your email marketing performance.

Put customer experience first

Email shouldn’t feel siloed from other channels you use to engage with prospects and customers. It should be fully aligned with the buyer journey and help them along the way to buying your product or service. Automation is one of the best ways to match your messaging with the stage that a prospect is at in the buyer journey.

By using segmentation and triggers to send highly personalised emails, you’ll be able to relate with the person receiving your messages. If an email subscriber recently downloaded a white paper, you could set up an automated email workflow that provides them with links to blogs and other relevant content on the topic.

Think differently

It’s true: most people receive far too much email and they simply don’t have the time or will to read every one of them. That’s why it’s so important to provide actual value to your email subscribers. There are a lot of companies who send out far too many unsolicited sales emails or are constantly trying to sell to their customers with promotions and offers.

Instead, use email to send useful, informative content that your audience will actually find helpful. This will prove to your customers that you understand the problems they face and if the content is high quality, you’ll become a trusted thought leader in your industry.

Humanise the language

B2B content doesn’t need to be dry and formal. At the end of the day, the target audience is still a human being. Getting the basics of personalisation right will go a long way, for example, adding the receiver’s name in the subject line will make your email 26% more likely to be opened. Another technique that humanises email is to send it from an actual person within your company rather than from a generic email address.

This can help to build the profile of the person whilst giving your brand an authentic voice. You could also try plain text emails to stand out from the huge quantities of HTML-heavy content in people’s inboxes these days. The magic of plain text email is that it has the potential to remove the “marketing fluff” and delivers your message in a more simple manner.

Read our blog post on six tips for sounding more conversational online to write better copy.

Utilise customer stories

There cannot possibly be anything better at showing how amazing your product is than a real testimonial and case study from an existing customer. Addressing the pain points of your audience through the lens of a customer is incredibly powerful as your prospects will inevitably see how your solution can also help them.

A survey showed that 51% of B2B customers want content that helps them in their decision-making and benchmarking. Consider a mix of video case studies and written versions to grab the attention of your prospects and allow them to enjoy different formats.

In 2021, email will continue to prevail as a must-have for B2B marketing. By switching up the content and trying out tactics like those described in this blog, you’ll be sure to keep it interesting and improve email marketing performance.