Email marketing remains one of the most effective tools in a B2B marketer’s arsenal, but what really works? Today, let me share with you some great B2B email examples and eight actionable steps that you can take to improve your B2B emails.

Let me start with the tips first. There are eight of them. The first tip is make it all about them, not you. Pack as much unique value into your email as you can, but invert the triangle, that is, pack the value into the beginning. Use as few words as you can, but as many as you need. It’s silly to get sucked into this short is good notion. As few as you can, but as many as you need. Build up a case for your call to action throughout the email. Don’t just wait until the end. Build a series of rapid emails straight after any any event. Back off to a nurture cadence, I’ll explain what I mean by that when I get into this a little bit later on, if you fail to get traction. Sign up the these two great sites, clearly, I’m going to give you two great sites to see a couple of guys that I consider to be absolute masters in action on email.

I looked for some great B2B email examples and the first that we found was from Brainrider, a gentleman by the name of Scott, so famous he only needs a first name. He’s given five good emails with some synthesized commentary. What he’s showing us here are a series of emails, things that he likes, things that there are opportunities for improvement. Quite handy. Take a look at them if you’re looking to get started with your own email format and templates.

Second one we found turns out to be from Scott again. I like this one a lot better. There are three only examples. The other one had five, but they are with much richer commentary. I think you’ll find this second one more useful than the first.

Third site that we found was from Aaron Ross, Jason Lemkin, and Heather R. Morgan. It’s on HubSpot. Cold Sales Email Template That Won 16 New B2B Customers. We don’t have any context of 16, is that a lot or a few based on the client that they were working for. The chain that they made I really agree with them. Let me quickly summarize what they showed. They said they looked at emails that were too long, had too many ideas, they were too much about me, and they were trying to be too cool.

They boiled it down to this email. “Subject line: 10x, this is your company name, traction in 10 minutes. Here’s the email: Hello, first name, I have an idea that I can explain in 10 minutes that can get, again your company name, its next 100 best customers. I recently used this idea to help our client, name of competitor, almost triple their monthly run rate. First name again, let’s schedule a quick 10-minute call so I can share the idea with you. When works best for you?”

Clearly, you’ve written it for me or at least you’ve customized it for me. It also packs the value in for me. It’s not about you. Hi, you. We do these things. I don’t care. Talk about me, not about you.

The results, 57% open rate, which is amazing, 21% response rate, also amazing, and 16 new customers. They boiled it down to why it worked. Definitely take a look at that one if you have an appetite to.

The fourth one that came up on Dr. Google, I’m not going to go through because most of the examples here are consumer. The title is 12 of the Best Email Marketing Examples You’ve Ever Seen (And Why They’re Great), good commentary, but most of them are consumer examples so I’m not going to go through them.

One more I do want to show you though because it was the most shared article we found. It had 84 Twitter shares, 16 LinkedIn shares, 11 Facebook shares, and two Google+ shares. Really, is anybody bothering with Google+ anymore, not sure. 12 Best Practices for B2B Welcome Emails. This is now a very different context and I think again a very powerful one.

The welcome email is just critical in B2B. These guys signed up for 40 sites and they only got five welcome emails. How damning is that? They’ve got those five emails included in here as examples with strong commentary or rich commentary around each of them. Really good one to check out if welcome emails are important to you and they are if you have subscribers or new customers. Really good idea.

Key points, send someone the welcome email immediately. Don’t wait. Try different types and test. Lead your new subscriber into your best content. Use the welcome email to get more information about them. Consider sending a series of welcome emails, not just one. Consider the sequence, that is, think about what sequence should be. Consider split-testing your welcome emails. Use your welcome email as an opportunity to survey subscribers. Offer bonus or some sort of other incentive. Use the segment feature, they’re talking about pinpoint, it’s a vendor segment feature to give subscribers a “Choose your own adventure” welcome series. Not a bad idea, only for the really advanced users I suspect. Use your welcome email to prompt people to follow you up on social media. Ask new subscribers to whitelist your emails. Good recommendation.

Let me synthesize what I think those sites are all saying and then, I’ll put my own spin on it and I’ll give you the eight actionable steps that you can take.

If your email is event driven, a download or registration, send it immediately. You must assume that the person reading your emails is super busy so pack the value in quickly. Ensure that the email is opened by beginning with a great header. Ask to be whitelisted. Sequence your emails. Keep them short. Use images and layout to lead to your call to action. I think that’s the net of what they’re saying.

My conclusions about these B2B email examples:

Unlike in several of the other videos that I’ve done recently, I don’t actually disagree with anything that’s being said, but I think that there are some points that are more important than others. I’m going to pull those out and add my own spin to it now with what I recommend is eight actionable steps for great B2B email examples.

Firstly, make it all about them, not about you. Pack as much value into your email as you can. Now, research them if you can. If you can’t research them, then segment as a proxy. Now if you can’t actually say for BHP, these things are true, then say for large businesses in Australia, for large businesses in France, whatever your segment is. Talk to the segment if you can’t talk to the business. Perhaps even better, because you’re a large business in France, that’s segment data even if you can’t talk to the individual.

Use any other data that you have. For example, pages that they’ve visited, their click steam, meaning the sequence of pages that they’ve visited or real data on the recipient from your content management system or from your CRM as well as aggregated data. Long story short, pack as much unique value into the email as you can.

Invert the triangle, and by that I mean pack the value into the beginning. Don’t build up to the big value. Pack in the beginning or they won’t even be reading the end of the email. Use as few words as you humanly can, but as I said at the top of this show, use as many as you need.

Build up the case throughout. Don’t just reference the call to action in the last paragraph. Refer to it two or three times or more if it makes sense throughout the email. I’m going to reach some … Let me say that better. At the end of this, I’m going to share with you a few cool tools that you can use to do what I’m talking about now. That insertion throughout the email builds a bit of a case for the call to action rather than it sneaking up on you.

Build a series of rapid emails straight after an event, not just one. Think about what the right cadence would be, it might be daily. Then back off to a nurture cadence if you fail to get any traction with those emails. Don’t keep going or you’ll start to annoy. After four or five emails, you might want to back off to three or four weekly emails just to keep on their radar.

Now I want you to sign up to two great sites to see a couple of masters in action, James Tuckerman, an Australian guy, Bryan Harris, an American. I think he’s a Texan. Yeah, know this about me, I’m a Texan as well. Despite my Australian accent, I was actually born in El Paso, Texas. I bet you didn’t know that. Anyhow, Bryan Harris I think is a Texan. Tuckerman and Harris I think are doing outstanding work. I’ll give you their URLs in the end of the show notes. I recommend you sign up to their sites and get bombarded with their emails to see a couple of absolute masters in action.

Speaking of signing up for great sites, if you haven’t already, can I invite you to subscribe? Go to align.me/blog or youtube.com/alignmeb2b. That way you’ll be the first to hear of these weekly posts that we put out rather than waiting for them to come out a month later. Definitely encourage you to subscribe if you haven’t already. If you have, phone a friend who hasn’t and encourage them to, and I would be super, super grateful.

Thirdly, if you have done both of these things, let us know. Here’s an email, we’ll use some better method in the future, but for the moment it’s an email. Go to Funnel Vision. Here’s the email address up here and send us an email and tell us topics that you would like us to cover in future blogs. I’m really happy to take input on that. Thank you for all three of those things in that kind of order.

That’s it for this week. I hope you got lots of value add off the show. Lots more planned for next week. Until then, may your funnel be full and always flowing.

References for B2B email examples: