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4 MIN. READ
Email has become a go-to channel for B2B marketers, supporting goals like nurturing leads, staying in touch with existing clients, and helping prospects move along the different stages of their buying journey.
Taking a strategic approach to delivering the right information to support buying activities will help you get more out of this channel. Here’s why you need email segmentation for a successful email marketing campaign.
With revenues that could exceed 17.9 billion by 2027, email marketing is a fast-growing channel. As more B2B marketers choose to prioritize this channel, competition keeps increasing. It’s already a prevalent channel for a majority of brands, with 69% of B2B marketers sending out email newsletters and 68% using other forms of email marketing. Moreover, segmenting and personalizing email campaigns result in a 46% higher open rate than non-personalized/segmented campaigns,
It’s becoming more and more difficult to stand out as prospects receive more emails from more potential vendors while spending only 10 seconds on average per branded email.
These numbers illustrate the importance of implementing a segmentation strategy to cut through the noise:
● Segmentation delivers value. It results in content that feels relevant to the unique pain points of the recipient and the current stage of the B2B buying journey they’re in. Offering value sets a precedent for a positive experience.
● This positive experience means recipients will be more likely to keep engaging with your content. You’ll have the opportunity to build connections and deliver complex messages over a series of emails the recipient keeps interacting with.
● With segmentation, you can connect pain points with relevant product features. This approach shows how the product or service is uniquely valuable to the recipient and can drive sales.
● Segmentation supports independent buying activities and reflects the current self-service model trend while preventing information overload.
● Creating segments helps you meet prospects’ expectations regarding personalized interactions. It’s something that 71% of consumers expect from brands.
● Offering a personalized experience means you’re connecting the right people to the right resources. This strategy helps you leverage existing content and improves the ROI of your content creation efforts.
There are different rationales you can follow when segmenting your email list. The right approach depends on your sales strategy and the type of products or services you offer:
● A common practice is to use firmographic data to segment your list based on the industry each prospect belongs to.
● You can also use firmographic data to group prospects based on company size or annual revenue.
● Needs-based segmentation is another strategy to explore. With this approach, you would segment your list based on the product or package a prospect has expressed interest in.
● Some marketers identify which stage of the buyer’s journey each prospect is in and create groups based on their level of sophistication.
● If you sell products in person or if a customer’s location is likely to influence their need for the product or service you offer, geographic segmentation can make sense.
● Another approach is to create customer tiers based on customer lifetime value (CLV) or data points that reflect the potential CLV of a new prospect.
Implementing a segmentation strategy calls for collecting accurate data about prospects. Here are different methods you can use:
● IndustrySelect’s database is a must-have tool for segmentation. You can focus on a specific geographic area and quickly identify the key companies for that area as well as the key people to contact. Building a list is easy with the many filtering tools, and you can export an editable file with company info and contact details to quickly launch an effective campaign.
● Opt-in forms that let recipients select the kind of emails they want to receive can be a good way to keep content relevant.
● Manual research with tools like business profiles or LinkedIn connections can help you segment your audience.
● Tracking the content a prospect consumes can reveal their behaviors and preferences.
● You can implement segmentation later in the buyer’s journey after a salesperson has the opportunity to ask a few questions during a sales call.
Segmentation works best if you operate with quality data and sound assumptions. Outdated or inaccurate data means that content might not feel relevant and might not help prospects progress in their journey. Data can also be incomplete and fail to reflect an important need for information.
More B2B organizations are adopting a data-driven approach to sales. Working with quality data is essential for staying competitive.
As a salesperson, marketer, or business owner, your time is valuable. IndustrySelect offers a must-have tool to help you save time and hit the ground running with your email marketing campaigns.
IndustrySelect gives you access to company profiles for close to half a million U.S. businesses, and you can easily identify relevant prospects by filtering results according to location, number of employees, revenue, SIC code, and more.
For each company listed, you’ll find the key people to contact along with a phone number and email address. Verified firsthand by a 80-person research team, the information is up-to-date and accurate.
Once you’ve conducted a search, you can save the results into an editable file and export it to create an email list or get started on building a database of accounts to manage.
Besides saving time, IndustrySelect helps you uncover new opportunities and reach out to the right people. Sign up for a free demo to test these features yourself!
Related: 101 Email Marketing Statistics Every B2B Marketer Should Know
Article Sources:
1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/812060/email-marketing-revenue-worldwide/
2. https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/B2B_2022_Research.pdf
3. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1273288/time-spent-brand-emails/
4. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-future-of-b2b-sales-is-hybrid
5. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights
6. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/gartner-predicts-65--of-b2b-sales-organizations-will-transition-
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