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Research shows successful drip campaigns can increase a brand’s email open rates by 80 percent and click-through rates by as much as 300 percent. However, the keyword here is successful.
When executed correctly, an email drip campaign will make it easier to nurture leads, retain customers, boost traffic, and generate conversions. But you could also run into issues or mistakes that hurt your business’s ROI. To help keep you on the right track, here are a few common B2B email marketing pitfalls to avoid:
What Is An Email Drip Campaign?
In B2B email marketing, a drip campaign refers to an automated email sent to a consumer’s inbox after they take a specific action. For instance, you can automate an email drip campaign to reach out at timely intervals if a consumer performs any of the following online behaviors:
- Fill out a form on your website
- Download an ebook, report, or gated content
- Subscribe to your podcast or YouTube channel
- Register for an event you are hosting
- Communicate with your customer service
- Place an order through your website
- Interact with you on social media
- Reach a customer milestone (i.e., anniversary)
- Abandon their cart
Effective email drip campaigns feature three main characteristics:
- They’re targeted to a specific consumer who has taken a particular action.
- They’re personalized to meet the consumer’s needs while making them feel valued.
- They’re also pre-written to automatically send regularly without manual effort on your part.
When a B2B email marketing plan has these crucial elements, you can use it to build a relationship with consumers and position your brand as the right choice. Here’s why this matters, according to recent McKinsey data:
- 72 percent of consumers want brands to know their interests and behaviors.
- 71 percent want brands to personalize each online interaction touchpoint.
- 67 percent want brands to offer relevant product or service recommendations.
- 66 percent want brands to tailor the content or message to meet a specific need.
- 65 percent want brands to create and alert them about targeted promotions.
- 59 percent want brands to reach out in key moments with timely communication.
- 58 percent want brands to follow up with them after completing a transaction.
- 51 percent want brands to initiate an onboarding process after the first purchase.
Email Drip Campaign Mistakes and How to Solve Them
As email marketers, the team at 10x Digital has to constantly optimize and improve our work to get in front of customers. And based on our experience, here are the mistakes you absolutely need to avoid:
Mistake 1: You Don’t Segment the Audience
Audience segmentation is vital for a successful B2B email marketing plan. When you don’t segment your customers based on their unique demographics or interests, you will risk sending emails that come across as irrelevant, generic, and spammy. Consumers expect to receive content that resonates with them. Likewise, they’ll notice when you send a mass email blast without thinking about the needs of recipients on the other end.
The Solution: Segment your audience into categories that accurately reflect their locations, interests, age brackets, online behaviors, search and purchase histories, or other demographic features. This makes it easier to personalize all email communications, leading to valuable content and encouraging more opens, clicks, or conversions.
Mistake 2: You Neglect Mobile Optimization
Every B2B email marketing plan must take mobile responsive design into consideration. About one-third of professionals check emails through a mobile device, but 7 in 10 users will delete an email that loads incorrectly on their smartphones, a recent Forbes article points out. If your email drip campaign isn’t optimized for mobile viewing, your content will look unattractive or render it unreadable.
The Solution: Create a mobile responsive email design so your content can be viewed on tablets and smartphones. Test the display time to see how fast the text and visuals load and ensure the layout fits smaller screen dimensions.
Mistake 3: You Send Emails Too Frequently
According to a survey from Hubspot, more than 50 percent of consumers will unsubscribe from emails if they come too often. A cadence that’s too frequent will start to feel more like spam—after all, the point of B2B email marketing is to nurture leads, not overwhelm them.
The Solution: Set a reasonable email frequency based on the preferences of your target audience. Experiment with one email a week, then adjust as necessary over time. Monitor open, bounce, and unsubscribe rates to evaluate the success of this cadence. For instance, if you notice positive traction, boost the frequency; if not, scale it back down.
Mistake 4: You Don’t Run Any A/B Testing
A/B testing is a user experience research methodology that compares two versions of the same email campaign to determine which performs better. A/B testing allows you to fine-tune elements such as the subject line, content, and call-to-action (CTA) for optimal results. Without this information, you could miss out on valuable, quantifiable opportunities to increase the effectiveness of your B2B email marketing plan.
The Solution: Incorporate A/B testing into your email drip campaign. Evaluate the performance of your subject lines, text and visuals, layout designs, and CTA buttons, then use these metrics to refine both the format and content. When you measure what works against what still needs improvement, you can make changes to attract and retain loyal customers.
Level-Up Your B2B Email Marketing Tactics
An email drip campaign can help your brand acquire new leads, retain existing customers, and optimize conversion rates. So, don’t let these common mistakes undermine the campaign’s success. Are you ready to build out your own email marketing campaign? Contact our team at 10x Digital today to get started (and avoid those common email pitfalls).