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  • How to Write B2B Emails That Sell: What You’re Missing Out On
John Harrison
March 5, 2024

B2B emails are like a game of high-stakes poker.

Winning requires skill, strategy, and an unyielding understanding of the players seated around the table. Misstep, and you’re just tossing chips into the pot, hoping for the best. But play your hand right, and the rewards can be enormous.

In the tangle of sales strategies, B2B emails stand as the unassailable kings, responsible for generating a whopping 3800% ROI. That’s $38 for each buck spent. Yet, many B2B marketers and sales professionals fall into the trap of sending bland, uninspiring emails that are swiftly confined to the recipient’s trash folder or, worse, marked as spam. What if I told you there’s a whole world of untapped potential within your B2B email marketing? Intriguing, right? Welcome aboard! Let’s reshuffle the deck and play an unbeatable hand.

The Ultimate Guide to Writing B2B Emails That Sell awaits.

Mastering the Art of Writing B2B Emails That Sell: A Comprehensive Guide

  • Uncover the secrets behind understanding your audience and learn how to write emails specifically for them.
  • Learn the genius behind crafting irresistible subject lines that grab your reader’s attention.
  • Discover the power of personalized emails that drive human engagement and convert prospects into customers.

Step 1: Understanding Your Audience

Knowing your audience isn’t just a “nice-to-know”, it’s an absolutely critical foundation stone for any effective email campaign. Indeed, you wouldn’t prescribe medication without knowing the symptoms, would you? So why would you send an email without knowing the recipients’ needs, aspirations, and pain points?

Your B2B audience is primarily composed of decision-makers. They are the voices behind the purchasing decisions. The golden key to your marketing success, therefore, is to delve deep into their minds and hearts. What drives their interests, what issues keep them up at night, and what solutions are they seeking? By gaining these insights, you can fashion your B2B email in a way that resonates with their individual needs and interests. Thus, promoting maximum engagement and conversion.

Step 2: Crafting a Compelling Subject Line

Commerce is theatre, and the ticket to the show lies in an intriguing subject line. No matter how excellent your email content, if your subject line fails to draw attention, the likelihood of your email being opened is slim.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, professionals have become rapidly adept at scanning and discarding irrelevant emails. A compelling subject line not only overpowers this resistance but also sparks curiosity. It stands out amongst hundreds of mundane subjects, promising tangible value to the reader.

Think of your subject line like a movie trailer. It should give a tantalizing hint of what’s to come without revealing everything. Dabble with curiosity, benefits, urgency and personalization to make your subject line a true attention magnet.

Step 3: Personalizing Your Email

Personalized emails are like mirrors. They reflect the recipient’s personal needs and interests, making your offer irresistible.

In a time when inboxes are flooded with promotional emails, tailoring your email to your recipient’s specific context can give you a competitive edge. Personalization doesn’t merely mean using the recipient’s name. It goes further to the point of addressing them with content that is contextually relevant based on their previous behaviors or interactions with your brand. When an email feels like it’s talking directly to them, they’re more likely to engage.

Personalization humanizes your brand and brings your recipient closer to it. It shows that you value them individually, fostering trust and building relationships – the backbone of any successful B2B marketing strategy.

B2B Email Marketing Best Practices to Boost Your Sales

  • Optimise email performance through A/B testing
  • Drive conversions with clear call-to-actions
  • Boost your B2B sales

Optimising email performance and driving conversions are crucial to boosting your B2B sales. By learning to utilise A/B testing and creating clear call-to-actions, you can take your email marketing to a new level.

The Power of A/B Testing

It’s a fact: A/B testing can supercharge your email performance. But how?

A/B testing involves creating two versions of your email and sending them to a select group of your audience. By measuring which version generates more engagement, you can improve your overall email performance, one test at a time. This process isn’t just about finding out what works—it’s also about learning what doesn’t, so you can eliminate ineffective tactics and focus on strategies that really yield results.

By avoiding guesswork and making data-backed decisions, A/B testing can help you craft emails that resonate with your audience and spur them into action.

Importance of a Clear Call-to-Action

If A/B testing is the engine that drives your email marketing, clear call-to-action (CTA) is the fuel. CTAs act as signposts guiding your readers towards the actions you want them to take. They can be as simple as “Sign up now” or as specific as “Download our free ebook.”

Think of it this way: you have piqued the interests of your prospects and drawn them into your content. What happens next? A clear, compelling CTA gives them the next step to take—and makes it irresistible.

CTAs aren’t just about telling your readers what to do; they’re about creating a sense of urgency and communicating the value your prospects stand to gain. So, make sure your CTAs are clear, compelling and drive home the advantage of taking immediate action.

You’ve now explored practical tactics that can redefine your B2B email marketing—A/B testing and effective CTAs. These strategies can keep your subscribers engaged and convert leads into customers, helping to turbocharge your B2B sales.

So, remember, boosting B2B sales isn’t mere magic or luck. It’s about mastering these best practices and consistently adapting to your customers’ needs.

Remember to breathe and take it one step at a time, there’s no rush.

Cold Email Templates for B2B: Your Key to Success

  • A quick look at what makes a cold email win or fail
  • Examples of cold email templates that have proven their worth
  • Our ‘no fluff’ promise: real strategies you can apply now

The Anatomy of a Successful Cold Email

Creating a successful cold email is a mix of science and art. It’s about understanding the recipient’s needs while leaving enough intrigue to make them want to learn more. Before we get to examples, let’s uncover the basic structure of a winning cold email.

A successful B2B cold email has three core elements – subject line, getting to the point, and call-to-action.

Subject line – This is the first interaction the recipient makes with your email. A great subject line provokes curiosity; it’s brief, personalized, and unambiguous. It’s your opportunity to make an impactful first impression.

Coming straight to the point – B2B professionals are busy people. They appreciate when someone gets straight to the point. After a brief intro, state why you’re reaching out and what you can provide for them. Keep it focused, actionable, and straightforward.

Call-to-action (CTA) – This is what directs the recipient on what to do next. It’s best when it is simple, compelling, and actionable. It could be to book a call, reply to the email, or check out your product/service.

Having these elements in place can significantly optimize your B2B cold emails.

Writing Better B2B Email Marketing Copy: Tips and Techniques

  • Power up your email copy with a compelling value proposition
  • Leverage storytelling to engage your B2B audience

Following the discussion on cold email templates as an instrumental strategy for your B2B email campaigns, let’s dive deeper into two techniques that will make your emails more captivating and persuasive.

The Role of Value Proposition in Your Email Copy

A value proposition, simply put, shows your audience why they should choose your offerings over those of your competitors. A compelling value proposition may be the silver bullet for your email copy, making it more persuasive.

  1. Unique: Your value proposition should reveal the unique aspects of your offering – something your competitors can’t provide.
  2. Compelling: A good value proposition resonates with the reader and taps into their needs or pain points.
  3. Clear: Avoid fluff. You want your audience to understand the values you’re offering without any extra work on their part.

By embedding a clear, compelling, and unique value proposition, you can make your email copy more engaging, increasing the likelihood of conversions.

The Power of Storytelling in B2B Emails

Static facts and figures rarely evoke interest. They fail to resonate at an emotional level in the way a narrative does. Storytelling serves as a superb technique in B2B email marketing as it makes your emails more engaging and memorable.

  1. Building an emotional connection: A well-told story can evoke feelings that lead to a deeper connection between you and your B2B audience. It creates a bond of trust and familiarity that often leads to loyalty.
  2. Making information digestible: Stories paint more vivid pictures, turning mundane facts into fascinating narratives. They offer a unique way to convey information which otherwise might be hard to digest.
  3. Engaging and memorable: Well-crafted stories have a staying power. They engage your audience and remain in their memories for a longer time.

Storytelling, when executed correctly, can pack a punch in your B2B emails, making them more effective in achieving your desired outcomes.

B2B Sales Email Techniques: How to Stand Out in the Inbox

  • How social proof amplifies your credibility.
  • The leverage of follow-up emails in lead nurturing and sales closing.
  • Social proof alleviates skepticism, builds trust and powers the decision-making process.
  • Follow-up emails keep prospects engaged, nurtures the relationship, and eventually, contributes to closing the deal.

Using Social Proof to Boost Credibility

Social proof acts as an amplifier for your credibility and influences prospects to act. Everyone’s a skeptic until proven otherwise. To satisfy our inherent scepticism, we rely on social proof, existing evidence that validates the worthiness of a product or service.

When applied to B2B emails, social proof triggers a psychological reaction. If a prospect sees that other companies have found success with your product or service, they’re more likely to believe that your offering can also solve their specific problem. It’s the classic scenario of, “If it worked for them, it could work for me”.

Single customer testimonies or big brand endorsements can fundamentally transform the perception of your business. Implanted effectively in your email’s body, they foster trust and power your prospects’ decision-making.

The Importance of Follow-Up Emails

Follow-up emails are critical in the sales process. They’re the links in your engagement chain, nurturing relationships with your leads and, ultimately, assisting in closing sales. The reality is, most sales don’t happen after the first correspondence. It’s that steady, genuine engagement that builds relationships, and subsequently, closes the deal.

Importantly, follow-up emails give you multiple opportunities to showcase your product’s value or explain how your service can resolve the lead’s issues. It’s a chance to answer questions, offer additional resources, or address concerns.

Also, these emails keep your company fresh in the prospect’s mind. It’s simple to slip into obscurity in a busy inbox, but consistent, relevant, and engaging follow-up emails keep you on the radar – a bit like diligent ping to remind them of your value proposition.

B2B Email Personalization Strategies: Making Your Prospects Feel Special

With a fierce battle raging for inbox space, personalization becomes your secret weapon to stand out.

  • Learn to leverage segmentation for hyper-relevant emails
  • Discover techniques to skyrocket email engagement with personalization

The Role of Segmentation in Email Personalization

Segmentation is not a mere division of your email list. It levels up your personalization game by catering to the unique interests and habits of your prospects, making your emails more meaningful and effective.

In the sphere of B2B communication, the more you can segment, the more specific and personalized your emails can get. Segmentation can be based on factors like industry type, role in the company, the behavior on your website, or even the previous interactions with your business.

This precision in delivering tailored content works magic in connecting with your prospects on a real, human level. It will increase their interest and trust in what you have to offer, culminating in higher lead conversion rates.

Personalization Techniques for Higher Engagement

Once you have mastered segmentation, various personalization techniques await to make your B2B emails truly engaging.

The starting point is using the recipient’s name – an old, but unfailing technique to catch attention. However, the real advancement lies beyond just addressing the recipient by their name.

For instance, consider customizing the content based on the segmentation data. If a prospect is from manufacturing, an email featuring your success case within their industry would undoubtedly spark more interest than a generic business success story. More than that, personalizing your emails based on the recipient’s interaction with your business can also strike a chord. If a prospect attended a webinar you hosted, the follow-up email could reference the event and include related resources.

Another powerful technique is to personalize the email sender. ‘From’ names infusing the representative’s name or role can breed trust, especially in a B2B scenario. For instance, sending an email from ‘John, XYZ Customer Success’ instead of just ‘XYZ’ builds a more authentic connection.

These personalization strategies, when used systematically, can significantly increase your email engagement, boosting click-through and conversion rates.

You Can Write B2B Emails that Really Make a Sale

Penning compelling subject lines, personalising your messages, creating strong CTAs and measuring email metrics – you now know the drill.

Make no mistake, mastering these skills will lead to improved email response rates and increased sales. Don’t underestimate the power of a well-crafted email in pulling your prospects across the finish line.

It’s time for you to ace it – start drafting engaging emails enriched by what you’ve learned here. See the difference for yourself when you apply these techniques to your next campaign.

Curious to know, which of these strategies resonated with your B2B email writing methods?

Remember: B2B emails don’t have to be mundane. With a sprinkle of creativity and strategy, you can craft emails that sell!

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About the Author

With Penfriend, I was able to generate two 3,000+ word articles around niche topics in 10 minutes. AND THEY ARE SO HUMAN. I can easily pass these first drafts to my SMEs to embed with practical examples and customer use cases. I have no doubt these will rank.

I cannot wait to put these articles into action and see what happens.

Jess Cook

Head of Content & Comms
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