B2B marketers are increasingly turning to email. NetPlus Marketing's chief strategy officer explains how they can apply B2C techniques for success.
Email is back in the spotlight and suppliers, vendors and providers are paying attention to the growth and opportunity with a new focus on B2B. The key opportunities for B2B marketers in email marketing reveal themselves in proven B2C applications and solutions that uniquely apply to distinctly different B2B marketing and sales cycles.
While B2B marketers are still clinging to more traditional tactics such as public relations, trade shows and direct mail, email is showing great strength. According to Forrester's Q2 2006 Business-to-Business Marketing Effectiveness Survey, email ranks third as a marketing tactic used by B2B marketers-- right behind public relations and ahead of direct mail. There is clearly a strong move from B2B marketers to embrace interactive more fully and explore a host of different online tactics.
How well is our industry serving the B2B marketplace in relation to email marketing services? How are they addressing and servicing the differences and opportunities in B2B email marketing as compared to B2C? Here is a glimpse into how providers are potentially responding to the B2B market and a pulse check of what the market is offering and saying with four top key opportunities in email marketing.
Borrowing from their brethren
From a features and functionality perspective as it relates to email marketing software there is not much of a difference between B2B and B2C email marketing-- on the front end. There are some companies that may speak to B2B in their marketing, their press releases and even in their strategic relationships but the supporting systems are really not that much different. It appears that B2B marketers are raising their level of sophistication in how they might use these solutions, borrowing to some extent from their B2C brethren marketers yet in consideration of their own unique needs. The great divide between B2C and B2B actually reveals new opportunities for B2B marketers.
A different perspective on a proven model
It is helpful for B2B marketers to look at consumer brand marketers as they have proven certain strategies and tactics that can apply to B2B efforts. Performance-based, qualified lead-generation programs are an example of this and we are seeing service providers including those in the email space starting to promote different pay models. Datran Media's adLoyalty product, for example, has taken its existing application and service model to the B2B marketplace. In the company's words, as they approach the B2B marketer they "…apply the same performance-based online marketing techniques to email marketing…" that they offer to B2C marketers. Their email marketing platform, as it was explained to me, offers a pay-for-performance model as well as a more traditional CPM pay scale.
Use of personalization; customized, targeted messaging; even promotions so successful in B2C email marketing may also apply to B2B efforts. For the most part, since expertise is a key selling point for many B2B marketers, emails offering whitepapers and other expert positioning content have been a strong part of an overall email and marketing strategy. It is not unusual also to find that a B2B marketer's efforts in email are limited to a once a month newsletter. Expanding and targeting content more strategically is an opportunity as well.
Tailored solutions to common issues
B2B email marketers have similar challenges as B2C marketers but the landscape and potential solutions change, particularly when it gets more tactical. For example, the challenge of spam filters and firewalls takes on new dimensions in B2B email marketing, and deliverability becomes more of an issue. Here we have corporate filters to contend with rather then ISPs. A number of providers have developed solutions specific to B2B issues such as these including Habeas, Pivotal Veracity and ReturnPath, who provide tools for scoring content against commonly used B2B spam filters and monitoring blacklists. The suitability of these products and services for individual B2B marketers depends on their volumes, criticality of mailings and severity of issues.
Closing the marketing and sales gap
In general, B2B marketing has more layers of complexity then B2C as the transaction more often then not happens offline and the price points tend to be higher. A $150,000 software install, for example, is a more considered and complex purchase than a $150 dress. With the former, you just might want to talk directly to someone. There also tends to be more points of influence and multiple stakeholders in a B2B purchase decision.
Most B2B marketers can improve marketing's value when they focus on increasing their alignment with sales and integrating their marketing programs. Demand generation or lead generation is an important goal on the front end of most B2B marketing efforts. It then flows to different touch points in the sales cycle. This speaks to a need to align the front-end email marketing system (and other marketing programs as well) to a sales system for a total customer service experience integrating the B2B marketing, sales and customer relationship lifecycle. For optimal performance, this requires an enterprise-wide system that can integrate and connect the relevant touch points for actionable responses. It also begs for the B2B marketer to understand the ROI metrics from cost per lead to lifetime customer value as the prospect heads down the sales cycle.
There are companies such as RightNow Technologies that bring their solution full circle to address the needs of B2B marketers. "It is a solution built around full customer lifecycle-- sales, service or marketing," explains Andrew Hull, marketing operations manager at RightNow Technologies. "We are looking at all those touch points -- multi-channel touch points -- and it is all aggregated in one spot." Their solution, explains Hull, connects the multi channels to integrate into an internal sales automation solution. This even extends to customer service where if a customer calls in for a service question, the company has someone with the knowledge to respond.
So B2B email marketing may be a horse of a different color-- but it is still a horse.
Denise Zimmerman is chief strategy officer and co-founder of NetPlus Marketing, a top 50 Interactive Agency based outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Read full bio.