All about B2B email types

The recipe for an effective cold email:

Here are the essential ingredients for a good cold mailing strategy:

• Personalize the content as much as possible: talk about a topic that connects your company to your recipient, a shared event, a resource recently published by your prospect… anything that can create a bond. According to ActiveTrail, 82% of marketers have seen an increase in open rates thanks to personalized emails (source), while 75% of them believe click-through rates are higher.
• Keep it short: whether in your introduction or the body of your email, get straight to the point. A few lines should be enough to spark your audience’s interest.
• Pay attention to your interlocutor: show them that you have taken a minimum of interest in their challenges before trying to sell your product.
• Forget attachments: no one wants to open a file from an unknown contact. Not to mention that an overly large email can quickly be penalized by email providers.
• Remember to add a CTA: the call-to-action can turn your lead into a prospect. Offer them to read a resource you created on a specific issue, ask for a short presentation meeting, offer them a white paper… think of anything that will lead them to learn more about your services.

If you follow these few tips, it’s highly likely that your cold emailing will convert much more effectively than a hastily sent email to a random list.

If you don’t hear back from your contact, don’t be afraid to follow up.

With LaGrowthMachine, you can automate your entire prospecting process, from initial contact to follow-ups, across multiple channels simultaneously!

You can add as many actions and triggers as you want:

For a 100% natural result, and a very high conversion rate in cold prospecting!

How to set up a follow-up email correctly?

“Hi Theo. I was just following up to see if you received my email about {Subject totally unrelated to my business}. If you have two minutes to discuss it, feel free to get back to me.”

These kinds of emails, any marketer receives several per week. The very first few times, we fall for it out of empathy and solidarity.

After realizing that the solution is, in most cases, not adapted to their problem, one quickly becomes annoyed by these incessant practices.

Especially when they are repeated 3, 4 times in the same week by the same person.

Here’s what to do to write a good follow-up email:

• Work on your subject line: it needs to be short and impactful. If it’s too long, it won’t display fully in webmail anyway. Aim for 50 characters.
• Provide context: if the prospect doesn’t identify you immediately, there’s little chance they’ll feel concerned by the rest of your email. Remind them of the last time you interacted and the subject of your conversation.
• Be natural, but polite: in an increasingly dehumanized society, it’s important to recreate a human connection. However, be polite. I’ve already received emails demanding an account of my silence. That’s an immediate deal-breaker.
• Add a CTA: As with cold emails, the call-to-action will allow you to drive your prospect towards your product or services. Avoid being too blunt by directing them straight to the purchase stage. Instead, offer them resources that will help them in their business, a meeting…

If you don’t get a response, try again after a few days. A 3-day interval is ideal to give them time to read your email.

After 3 or 4 follow-up emails, you can consider that the prospect is not interested in your services. You can then remove them from your data list.

How to write a good invitation email?

Before you start writing, first determine your targets.

Segment your contacts based on their socio-professional information and thus improve your campaign’s performance.

Now that it’s done, it’s time to write it by following these tips:

• Craft the subject line: we can’t stress this enough, it’s the crucial step. If your subject line isn’t impactful, there’s a high chance your email will be overlooked. Include all useful information in a minimum of characters.
• Provide all important information: If you don’t specify the date, time, and location of your event, how do you expect your audience to be available? An invitation email without this information is a wasted email.
• Briefly describe the program: You don’t need to detail your event minute by minute. Not to mention that the reality on the ground is sometimes very different from what was expected during its preparation. Outline your event with key stages. “6 PM, welcome cocktail; 8 PM: CEO’s speech; 8:30 PM: interactive quiz; 9 PM: afterwork; 11:30 PM: gift distribution.”
• Detail the benefits of attending: if I don’t see the point of attending an event, there’s little chance I’ll dedicate time to it. What will your prospect gain from attending? + ⇒ Meet decision-makers in their field? A free subscription? Meet their favorite salesperson in person?
• Don’t neglect the visuals: When done well, a quick glance at a visual can provide all the necessary information to your prospect. It’s a more engaging way than a series of written paragraphs.

As with anything, you will likely need to follow up with some of the invited guests.

In each follow-up email, include the visual summarizing the professional information.

You can also play on a sense of urgency. Besides prompting your prospect’s decision, it will give them the impression that the event is highly sought after.

Example: “only 5 spots left for our annual conference dedicated to web marketing.”

How to set up a B2B newsletter effectively?

Creating an effective newsletter with a good open rate requires preparation time and a lot of A/B testing.

In the meantime, here are some tips to help you get started:

• Prefer a human sender: it’s much nicer to receive information from a team member than from a generic name. Opt for “Arthur from SuperCompany” rather than “The Super Company”. The more human you appear, the more you’ll be able to retain your customers.
• Organize your newsletter into blocks: in addition to making it easier to read, this organization will allow you to cover multiple topics, or even radically different information.
• Provide high added value: your prospects and clients want to learn things. Offer them free advice to develop their business, position yourself as a true expert on a subject. Take the opportunity to promote your current offers or highlight an upcoming event.
• Pay attention to the visuals: a consistent design that aligns with your brand identity is a real plus. It will allow for better memorization, in addition to reinforcing your credibility and brand awareness.
• Be mindful of images: while they are sometimes worth 1000 words, they can also significantly hinder your deliverability. Reduce their size as much as possible and only add them when truly relevant.
• Perform A/B testing: this is the best way to know which subject line is most effective. But also which format works best, which time is most suitable.
• Define the best time slot: generally, weekdays work best, with a preference for Tuesday or Thursday. Each audience has its own reaction patterns. The best approach is to vary sending times before determining which is most optimized, by analyzing open and click-through rates. Even better, survey your audience directly to ask them for the most suitable sending time.

How to optimize your newsletter’s deliverability?

A newsletter is only effective if its deliverability is optimized and well-managed. Deliverability translates to your email’s ability to reach your recipient’s inbox. Many factors can hinder its delivery.

Here are 8 tips to optimize your deliverability:

• Clean your contact lists
• Make the unsubscribe option visible
• Use current identification standards (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
• Choose an email address associated with your domain name
• Craft your subject lines
• Avoid words and characters that resemble SPAM (e.g., PROMOTION$$$$)
• Only send emails to prospects who have consented to receive them
• Opt for a good text-to-image ratio (with a majority of text) where possible (without neglecting the graphic aspect)

The loyalty email

This is a huge classic. It aims to reward customers for their loyalty, improve retention, and increase revenue. It is a fundamental pillar of relationship marketing.

You can offer an exclusive discount code, early access, a private event, a birthday gift… in short, anything that makes your customers feel privileged.

The acquisition email

What better way to turn prospects into customers than by encouraging them to buy by offering them a discount or a dedicated benefit?

Home delivery services are very fond of this, with codes applied for “first order”.

In B2B, you can use it by offering a percentage discount on training, a free trial month on a dedicated feature…

The follow-up email

Your prospect isn’t responding? Offer them a small gift with your second or third follow-up email… Generally, that’s a good trigger.

Alternatively, it can be used in case of cart abandonment (“we noticed you didn’t complete the purchase of our complete guide to marketing, this promo code might be useful”).

For a very limited offer, don’t hesitate to follow up with your lead a few days before it ends. Remind them that the offer is ending soon or that there are very few spots left for a particular event or training.

What are the forms of a prospecting email?

Let’s detail their different characteristics together.

• The introductory email: this is your first contact with your lead. It must therefore immediately capture the attention of your potential client.
• The follow-up email: we’ve already covered this, it’s inseparable from any sales prospecting strategy. Always accompanied by a call-to-action, it must recontextualize the introductory message while offering added value.
• The nurturing email: these are what will allow you to enrich the data collected on your leads. You will use them to move them forward in your conversion funnel. They generally consist of a series of emails offering various content and CTAs to make the prospect aware of your brand content.
• The loyalty email: highlight your clients, optimize your retention. Make them feel important and valued. Collect their feedback on your products, offer them dedicated events, celebrate their birthday, give them white papers…
• The notification email: this occurs on a specific event. It notably marks your prospect’s progress in your sales cycle. It can follow up on a cart abandonment, notify a lead’s interest in specific content, suggest similar content, celebrate a particular event like a professional anniversary…
• The closing email: This is the final step of your conversion funnel. Through it, your prospect becomes a customer, after clicking on a call-to-action leading them to a sales page. Ideally, it is managed by the sales teams, once it has been enriched by marketing processes.