Five Ways To Design More Effective
B2B E-mails

Companies that primarily serve B2B clients are beginning to revisit how they should structure and design their e-mail communications. While many firms consider factors such as timing, offerings, etc., often not enough attention is paid to how to improve the effectiveness of an e-mail’s content and features.

E-mail can be a limiting medium to work in. Despite that there are many opportunities to make e-mails more compelling by incorporating content and features that are designed to capture users attention.

Below is a list of five tactics that are all fairly simple to implement and can enhance the usefulness of your emails improving their effectiveness.

1. Make Forward To A Friend Better

Improve upon the traditional ‘Forward To A Friend’ feature by adding it into more relevant areas of your e-mails as opposed to burying it at the top or bottom.

For instance, if you are sending out offers or a business publication with articles, incorporate ‘Forward To A Friend’ multiple times within the e-mail to associate it with each offer or article. This increases the relevancy of the feature, making users more likely to share.

2. Add Social Sharing Features

Add social sharing links to your e-mails. Similar to ‘Forward To A Friend’, this feature should be integrated with particular offers or articles that you’re highlighting within your e-mail. Users can then share a link that would point to a corresponding page on your web site

Many hosted e-mail services like Vertical Response and Bronto have features that allow you to easily add sharing to your e-mails to connect them with popular social networking sites, such as Twitter and LinkedIn.

3. Include Related Content

If you’re using opt-in lists then you already have established some connection with the users who are receiving your e-mails.

Despite this not every e-mail you send is going to resonate with your entire mailing list. By including additional content that is related to to the focus of your e-mail you will expand the likelihood that more users will be interested in your communications.

Even if this doesn’t result in more direct engagement, it has the added benefit of exposing your current and prospective clients to more of your products and services.

4. Add Timely and Topical Content

Building on the idea of including related content, it is always helpful to add any upcoming events, trade shows, etc. These provide additional opportunities to gain the interest of users who may not respond to the primary messages within your e-mail.

Doing this also highlights the activities that your company participates in and can reinforce your promotions of an upcoming event.

5. Include Informative And Useful Content — Go Beyond Promotions

While the goal of e-mail communications is to ultimately increase sales, this is particularly challenging for B2B companies who can’t easily capitalize on a sale or impulse promotion in an e-mail.

Sending out informative articles that cover industry news, trends, regulations, etc. helps you establish yourself as an expert in your field. This doesn’t have to be as formal as a newsletter and could be just one of many features in your e-mails.

Another benefit of shaping your e-mails around informative content, like long-form articles, is that you can include an excerpt in the e-mail enticing the user to jump to your corporate blog or another section of your web site to finish reading the full text.