Rethink: Email Marketing Strategies For Enterprise Buyers

Email marketing has been getting a bad rep lately. Of course, why wouldn’t it? Think of all the marketing communications you receive from people or organizations you barely know.

It feels like spam and a complete waste of time. Your buyers are thinking the same. They don’t know what you offer or don’t even need what you’re selling. All they want is whatever fancies them at that moment. It could be an article that helps them understand their industry better or a moment in their life they’re reflecting on.

What role does your email play in this scenario?

If you catch them at the wrong time, best case scenario, it stays in their inbox forever, but in the worst case scenario, they unsubscribe from all future communications.

However, email is still a powerful channel to connect with your prospects. Novice marketers are quick to jump on bandwagons and propagate misinformation- they echo what they have heard – email marketing is dead.

No, that is not the case. Contrary to belief, email marketing is thriving.

It’s the impersonal and thoughtless email marketing practices that are losing their grip on buyers. The buyer is smart- why should this channel lag?

Email Marketing is not dead.

Marigold, in their 2024 Consumer Trends Index, reports that among all marketing channels, email stands #1.

Is that surprising? For marketing teams that don’t have the proper strategies in place, this could be. However, email marketing is not dead. And it’s not going to die anytime soon.

But emails that look, sound, and feel like spam will end up in the bin, and that’s not going to go away either. Bad emails will make your business lose reputation and opportunities.

This powerful tool needs the reverence it deserves. It cannot be treated like other channels where value and information don’t go hand in hand.

Yes, you can talk about your company and what you can do for your buyers. But buyers don’t care about what you offer. They care about what you can do for them and their organization’s goals and pain points.

Self-serving messages no longer work.

Strategy #1: Understand the buyer

Let’s start with the basics, understanding the buyer.

But is this a strategy? Well, if you go by the definition set forth by Michael E. Porter- “Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value”

Then no.

It’s not a strategy. But marketing teams have overlooked this crucial step. Now, it has become a unique activity done by a few marketing teams.

What do we mean by this?

Marketing teams may check all the points- firmographic, demographic, etc. But they will not dive into the nuances of the buyer.

This includes understanding the buyer committee and the context of why they want to buy.

But this is easier said than done. Not many teams have access to real-time data of the buyer, nor do they have the budget to buy every tool under the sun. For such teams, understanding the buyer means creating their pool of data through email.

The greatest advantage in-house marketing has is its understanding of the product.

You know what you sell and why. You know the pain points your tool is solving— the only thing standing between you and your buyer is communication.

In our experience, at this stage, you should be thorough with the industry your buyer is in and your tool’s role in helping them break the competition.

Then, it’s about crafting the message and gathering data. A good framework that works for us is: –

1. Gathering industry insights through reports
2. Finding common pain points in your niche through social listening like Reddit or the b2b forum
3. Creating messages that showcase how your tool, product, or service serves the buyer and how- this is going to be a field trip for your writers!
4. Playing with the subject lines— surprisingly, direct subject lines work well. However, we cannot stress enough the importance of trying different subject lines with varying segments.
5. Understanding the interactions.

The intention behind this framework is to gauge the buyers’ interaction with your offers and whether your market position and marketing messages are making sense to them.

Then, iterate and create a feedback loop that gives you buyer data.

Strategy #2: Segmentation

Once you have enough data and begin understanding what your buyer wants, you’ll notice behavioral clusters.

Honestly, they are fascinating to watch. Every potential buyer interacting with your brand will exhibit unique behaviors but will also have some shared characteristics.

You must target these behavioral clusters called segments to craft personalized messages.

Two tools will be helpful here: –

1. A marketer who understands underlying behavioral patterns
2. Automated email tasks.

We could give you a list of possible segmentation- the basic ones like demographics, geographic, and the like. But you must aim for real-time behavior from your prospects if you want to succeed.

1. These could be buyers who demonstrate similar pain points.
2. They could be showing similar levels of engagement
3. Some would prefer one content over the other or prefer the same type of messaging
4. Some would be in different stages of the funnel (which requires unique content to nurture)
5. Some clusters may exhibit behavior unique to your brand (And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise)

These clusters will reveal something about your buyer, and it is up to you to find out what.

Once you find it, use these to craft personalized messages. And automate their delivery based on their behavior.

Let’s illustrate this.

We had a cluster of prospects who would visit our website but did not book calls. It was puzzling. Some of them browsed our service pages and read our blogs. But they did not book any calls.

The question was: Why not?

Was it a regional thing, or was it just window shopping? We wanted answers.

The solution we came up with? If the prospect has been on our blogs and service pages, we send them an automated yet personalized message.

It differed from industry to industry, but the core message remained: You’re looking for a solution. We can help. Here’s why we’re the right fit for you.

The automated workflow had a few conditions:-

1. We had to know their industry
2. The user must have visited at least once before and checked both our services and blogs.
3. If the email was opened but they did not click book a call, we would send a follow-up email.

But even here, we faced troubles. Some of our assumptions were not correct.

Maybe in some segments, pricing was not the issue- it was timing. They didn’t want our services at that time but wanted to compare services in the industry.

We had to resegment and realized it’s not about booking calls- we need to nurture and build a relationship with the buyer.

Strategy #3: Nurturing

Nurturing is the holy grail of email marketing. Understanding the buyer and segmentation culminates in the process known as nurturing.

But why is this necessary?

Well, first, buyers are self-directed. They no longer need sales reps to guide them through any process. They know what they want. Buyers usually have a list of vendors they would like to buy from.

Even buying committees have a shared list. Partners they have worked with or brands with strong mindshare.

The question is: Are you on that list?

Knowing the fierce competition, especially in the SaaS industry, the chances are slim.

These three strategies, especially nurturing, will help you build that trust. Companies often make the mistake of targeting companies in-market, but they forget that everyone is after them, too.

But the companies that are out-market are equally important, especially for long-term growth. That’s why newsletters are so popular because they provide value to your potential buyers without the expectation of an immediate buy.

Nurturing also requires automated processes. And you will have to set them up.

The advice? Play around with the workflows.

Through segmentation and understanding your buyers, you will come to understand how to nurture them in ways unique to specific segments.

Email marketing: With great power comes great responsibility

You must have noticed a theme with the strategies. It’s understanding the buyer and delivering value.

But why? Because brand’s today are shaped by two things, according to Allyson Havener of TrustRadius:

1. Trust
2. And acquiring mindshare by sharing content with something interesting to say.

And no tool can do this better than email marketing. Craft thoughtful messages and let your offers speak for themselves.

Think of the buyers and what they would want to hear from you. Give your perspective and make things interesting.

After all, there’s a lot of uninspired marketing campaigns out there. Giving yourself that chance to stand out. Trust us, your buyers will remember you.