Gregg Blanchard February 13, 2024
The vast majority of my marketing career has been spent in the business-to-business (B2B) marketing space where I'm a business sending emails to other businesses trying to get them to buy whatever it is I'm selling. This a very common thing out there in the world of marketing, but it's not such a common thing in the world of email emails. Usually the best examples folks share in conference talks and blog posts and such are retail emails full of cute graphics and shiny packaging and all of the things that B2B companies often lack.
Today, let's change that by digging into the Really Good Emails database and sharing / analyzing 7 examples of great business marketing emails.
What makes a great B2B marketing email?
I think it'd be good to start with the question because B2B marketing emails can vary massively from a B2C or sales email. Why? Because goals vary. In the world of retail, for example, you're going to send an email today and expect revenue today. Not in a week, not in a month, not in a year...you'll expect revenue immediately in the form of people buying your product.
In the world of business email, you may be working on a sales cycle where you aren't expecting people to for months if not years. So your goals for an email might be as simple as:
- Getting people who might be in the market for your product to reach out and start a conversation with your sales team
- Make people aware of a specific feature that may lead them to put you on a short list the next time they shop for your product/service
- Help people imagine the benefits of one day working with your business
- Listen to a podcast or webinar that has some key messages you want them to think about as they go about their day
It could even be as simple as seeing your logo just that one extra time so they'll recognize you at that big conference next month. Whatever the case, the goal matters and the goals for B2B emails are different. So I'll try to cover emails that accomplish a variety of business goals to illustrate various approaches to B2B email marketing strategy.
1) Miro's Personal Intro Email Campaign
It's very common in the B2B world to see emails that start right in with screenshots and sales pitches right from the top. I've been guilty of this myself but this email example from Miro the template starts off with a nice, personal touch. Instead of a headline and hero image, it's a plain-text-style welcome message written by a real human from a real part of the business with that human's real face and name at the bottom. Pretty slick, eh? What's great, though, is that after that friendly, approachable introduction the email goes on to contain all of the other links and updates and such that Miro wants to get a few more eyes on. Friendly up top, business at the bottom. I dig this example a lot.
2) Station's Customer Story Email
I love a good, creative customer story and this email from Station is a really good, creative customer story. Instead of writing out the story in the form of a blog post or video, they turned the story into a series of highlights around which product each member of the featured team likes the best. It carries the feel of a retail email (partly because it is) but does so in a way that really speaks to the business buyer in particular who buys in different ways and for different reasons than a traditional consumer might. There's also something really, really important to mention about this B2B email: the assets. Even with the glossy images of their products, this example wouldn't look nearly as good if they hadn't invested in high quality photography of their customers as well. Layer in the fact that each member of the team represents a slightly different buyer persona and this is a elegantly powerful message packed in a single, business marketing email.
3) Iterable Demo Request Confirmation Email
I guess it's not surprise that an email marketing company would be really savvy with their B2B emails when trying to lock in businesses as new users, because this campaign from Iterable is really clever. Requesting a demo is a thing, but a demo request confirmation email that reminds that demo requester of all the reasons Iterable is a great choice for sending their business's emails? Well, that's not so common. But the idea we see in this example - making the most of the attention and eyeballs that high-open-rate emails like confirmations receive - isn't new, it's simply reserved for non B2B brand's who do really high volumes of confirmation emails. But why not? People are going to open this email, so why not toss in a little social proof and further reading to get them ever more ready for a demo than they were when they hit "submit" on your forms? This blending of traditional email marketing concepts with B2B campaigns is simple, brilliant, and beautifully done with this bright, easy-to-scan template from Iterable.
4) Shopify's B2B Welcome Email
Yes, Shopify's users are selling retail items, but those users? Yep, you guessed it, they're businesses. Shopify is in the B2B game. As such, they have the same challenges of onboarding and churn that other SaaS businesses do. And while they likely have a bunch of tools and cues in the app to increase onboarding success, this email campaign is a really nice example of complimenting that effort. Instead of a typical welcome email that ends when the welcome ends, this campaign adds two content blocks below that section that act as a sort of checklist for other things this new users can, and should, do as they get started with their new account. Just like the last B2B email we talked about, this campaign likely sees a massive open rate and adding additional content to this confirmation takes full advantage of the attention the core email message receives from this business's audience.
5) Basecamp's "What's New" Series
One of the biggest challenges with B2B marketing is the length of your sales cycle. Instead of sending an email and seeing people buy within minutes of that message hitting their inbox, marketers are often playing the long game when they build an email marketing strategy to sell to other businesses. Sometimes the battle is waiting for the right time, but other times it's finding that one missing feature that a handful of people were waiting for. There is no such thing as a silver bullet feature but every feature added by a business makes that business's products just a little bit more attractive to a handful of users. This email series from Basecamp is a perfect example of using email to highlight all of these little perks in a lightweight, recurring way to both keep their brand on folks' brains but also inform their market about what's changing in case those changes are just what a few teams out there had been waiting for. Toss in a clean design and this is a really simple but effective B2B email strategy.
6) NBS Podcast Launch Email
While channels like podcasting do have some built in distribution and marketing, it's easy to overlook the fact that one of the biggest allies for a business to build your following on one channel is to use other channels to push existing fans of your business over there. This email example from NBS does this beautifully by giving the headline, subheader, and main image lots of space and color, making the hero image intuitively clickable, and then limiting text before making their call to action. And while I love the fact that they're promoting the podcast, I hope they'd consider reusing this B2B template to promote individual episodes that are especially engaging. Just because people aren't subscribed to you in their favorite podcast app doesn't mean you can use other channels to get more eyes on each episode. Email is a great tool for this sort of job when it comes to B2B strategy and NBS does this really nicely with this example.
7) Pitch's Screenshot of the Sales Page
As marketers we love to obsess over every word and phrase and layout and image and button and style and breakpoint on our websites. And while we do the same with our emails, sometimes one of the easiest ways to turn a great business webpage into a great business email is to not reinvent the wheel but integrate the same language and even a screenshot right into the template like Pitch did with this example. The design of the sales page already does a great job of communicating the value of this new feature in an effective, tidy package so they led with that. Notice how the headline in the template of this B2B email actually sits below the headline in the screenshot. It's a simple solution to taking all that work spent on the sales page and converting it into an effective campaign.
Hopefully these seven campaigns just get the juices flowing a little bit when you sit down map out your team's next round of email strategy. Maybe you take a little idea from each and blend them into your own, maybe you take whole sections of an email and copy them into a new temple, or perhaps getting the wheels turning is enough to spark totally new, innovative ideas for your business's next campaign.
Either way, I hope they help. And if you have a great example of B2B email marketing that you love? Send it along. I'd love to see.