10 Tips To Create An Irresistible B2B Newsletter that Converts
Emailing

10 Tips To Create An Irresistible B2B Newsletter that Converts

3.80/5(10)

Believe it or not, email marketing is an indispensable tool for every B2B business. And you need to get it right so your business can successfully scale through the spammy hurdles other competitors face.

But that’s easier said than done. Continue reading to learn the 10 most effective ways to create engaging B2B newsletters and improve your open rates.

What is a B2B Newsletter?

A B2B newsletter is an excellent email marketing channel for delivering valuable resources, industry news, and showcasing products to prospective clients.

It typically involves a consistent and timed rollout of emails to subscribers and specific groups of people – primarily companies.

Note that newsletters are entirely different from the usual one-time email usually sent on a whim to friends and family or business buddies.

An email newsletter features a lot of technicalities, ranging from how it is formatted to the type of message it should convey. The template design and word length are also considered before a standard newsletter can be created.

Despite sharing some similarities in content and format, it is essential to note that B2B newsletters differ from B2C emails since the former appeal to facts rather than emotions. You are not trying to close quick sales or compel your clients to throw their money at you immediately.

Instead, B2B newsletters build a good rapport between your business and the involved clients’ companies until they are thoroughly convinced to invest in your services or products. This results in a very long sales cycle but profitable ROI when done well.

What Should Be in a B2B Newsletter?

A typical B2B newsletter outline includes:

  • A subject line
  • The introduction header
  • An email body
  • A call-to-action button

Different categories of B2B newsletters also have different content and format depending on the purpose for which they were created. 

Some newsletters are used to deliver regular company updates and product releases, while others focus on educating subscribers with consistent blog posts.


Need help improving your emails’ |

Discover the best agencies for your project based on your own specific requirements.

Find an agency

Types of B2B Newsletters

The different types of B2B newsletters and their content are:

Reporting email newsletters

A reporting email newsletter contains weekly or monthly company news and general statistical reports valuable to subscribers.

It is one of the most crucial newsletters as it carries subscribers along and makes them feel prioritized. Moreover, you can use report newsletters to inform your subscribers of upcoming events.

Blog-style email newsletters

This type of B2B newsletter features a relevant list of curated how-tos and educational content to inform clients about your products and services.

Blog-style emails accelerate your customers’ journey, help you establish firm brand authority, and increase conversion rates.

Promotional email newsletters

Promotional B2B newsletters are used to showcase your top products and most valuable services. If your SaaS business provides two or more services, you can feature the best-performing ones occasionally.

Visually-focused email newsletter

Visually focused emails can be promotional or reporting. However, it involves the stern use of visual content like high-quality graphic images, well-designed infographics, and embedded videos if necessary. They usually contain fewer texts and zero fluff.

Other categories of newsletters include seasonal, user-generated, and event email newsletters.

10 Tips to Create An Effective B2B Newsletter

Email marketers are usually faced with the problem of getting their emails read by end users, prospects, and companies. More often than not, your newsletters are likely to land in the spam box or get archived. 

According to Smartinsights, the overall open rate for businesses is 16.97%, accompanied by a 10.29% click-through rate. That is much less than the nearly 100 emails an average person receives daily.

To help you overcome these hurdles, we have compiled 10 simple yet effective ways to craft a newsletter that is too good to be ignored.

Tip #1 – Understand your target audience

B2B email marketing requires specificity. You can’t just walk in and bulk-email everyone with your persuasive copy.

For example:

Imagine an ERP (enterprise resource planning) company like SAP sending a customized newsletter about its software and product updates to a mid-sized food company. There is zero correlation between the sender and the receiver. Unsurprisingly, such emails will yield zero conversions.

Your newsletter is only ‘irresistible’ if sent to the proper contacts. So you need to gather enough intel on companies whose needs can be met by your products, find their pain points, and design a proper template for them.

Importantly, you should segment the categories of people who receive your newsletters. A good rule of thumb is to prioritize influencers and decision-makers of the companies you are targeting.

Figure out the financial capacity of your target audience as well to avoid wasting time on those who can’t pay.

Tip #2 – Use catchy yet relevant subject line

Your subject line or newsletter’s headline is also known as the “hook.” Although your subject line is only a combination of five to eight words or less, it is the primary determinant of whether or not your email is opened.

So you need to imbue it with power words, curiosity, or catchy yet relevant triggers.

Example:

Busy? Let us take something off your plate.” 

Now you have to be very careful here. Too many catchy phrases in your subject line, followed by underdelivered content in the email body, is going to piss off your leads.

That is why you need to ensure that your email headline is aligned with the whole message you want to pass across.

Make sure each subject line sounds natural and keep it short. The fewer it is, the more relevant. A weekly newsletter from the giant AI editing tool, Grammarly, demonstrates this perfectly.

Example of B2B Newsletter: Grammarly
Example of Grammarly’s Newsletter

Tip #3 – Follow up with relevant paragraphs

Once you’ve compelled your leads (probably those proud industry leaders) to click the subject line, it is time to give them the actual message. Unlike B2C business emails, B2B newsletters appeal to facts, not emotions.

Feature your most important product and highlight how it can help your leads reduce their workload or increase productivity.

A craft by Videoform below focuses on the customers’ pain points, concrete solutions available, a sphere of influence, and a prompt.

Example of B2B Newsletter: Videoform

Be careful not to overstuff your email body with information and features. Moreover, the email body for every B2B newsletter is geared toward building a harmonious relationship between you and your prospects.

So it shouldn’t look so copy-filled and persuasive. Instead, you should adopt a natural yet interesting tone when weaving your words together.

Tip #4 – Make it short and utilize infographics

Before you get engrossed with the various ideas popping in and out of your head, don’t forget that your leads are very busy people.

I’m talking about medium-sized and top industrial influencers and decision-makers. If you are boasting about an automation tool that can reduce your leads’ work time, your email should also demonstrate it.

Newsletters are often expected to contain walls of texts, but you can ease this old practice by utilizing bullet points or lists. Your email body should only have 25 to 125 words.

Too much content and ambiguous words will irritate your leads and have them dump you halfway.

Another actionable tip is to integrate infographics into your newsletter. Infographics contain fewer texts but convey far more information. Moreover, infographics are visually appealing and bring about more conversions.

Take the monthly newsletter below from Grammarly as an example:

Example of infographics

Tip #5 – Personalized emails have more CTR

Personalization goes beyond including the “firstName” of clients or subscribers in every sentence block. Almost all B2B and B2C email marketers do that nowadays.

So you need to employ something different to stand out and make your leads or subscribers read through. This is where your buyer personas come in very handy. 

Tailor content relevant to each lead based on their details. When addressing a target, ensure you have enough demographic information.

With this information you can determine the best time to send your newsletter and the type of sequence each email should follow. The same email sequence that works for client A might constitute a nuisance for client B.

While including “firstname” in your emails is an outdated and over-used method, as earlier said, it can still do some magic for you if used properly. Employ it sparingly and give it a natural flow without sounding creepy.

Tip #6 – Don’t sound sale-sy

I get it! The main purpose of email marketing is to generate sales or retain customers, but you don’t need to write it all over your email.

Plastering your newsletters with a lot of “BUY ME NOW” texts or buttons will have the opposite effect. If you make your clients feel as though you are a money monger, then the sales cycle is already ruined.

Always remember that B2B businesses focus on cultivating customer relationships since the sale cycle is usually a very long one.

The moment you start sounding pushy like B2C businesses do, most clients will likely kick your emails into the basket.

You should also avoid phrases like “one in a lifetime opportunity”, “free”, and many other hyperbolic words. Such phrases give your brand an unprofessional image.

Instead, nurture your audience with relevant information and engage them with helpful facts.

Tip #7 – Include a CTA button

No matter how irresistible your newsletter is, it is completely useless if there is no call-to-action button. You can’t leave your clients halfway without providing a means for them to explore more details, off-email. 

Once your B2B leads are unable to explore further, there is a huge possibility they will switch to the next competitor. And even if your subsequent emails contain a CTA button, unlike the previous ones, the damage caused cannot be repaired.

That is why you should include a CTA button in each email, regardless of which sales stage you are at.

However, call-to-action buttons for B2B newsletters should never come off as purchase prompts like “buy two, get one” or spam triggers like “click here”. 

Go descriptive and use CTAs like, “Schedule a free consultation.” You can also add a business owner email signature and hyperlink it to your relevant webpages, social media accounts, or appointment booking software like Calendly.

Tip #8 – Use videos in your emails

Let’s start with three interesting statistics. Video in emails increases open rates by 19%, improves click-through rates by 65%, and reduces the number of unsubscribes by 26%.

Wow, right? These figures are mind-blowing and could be a great game-changer when integrated with your email practices.

Although embedding videos in emails is still not universally accepted, you can find your way around the traditional conventions. Since clients and potential leads love to watch videos summarizing your product’s features and values, you should give it to them.

Similar to other Saas content marketing strategies, you need to be careful of creating too long videos. 1-minute videos fair well for email marketing and can add a particular charm to your newsletters if properly invested in.

Tip #9 – Allow readers to customize email preferences

For a B2B firm offering more than one product or services, sending the same type of email newsletters to your audiences is totally a spoiler.

Case-wise, Hubspot offers a range of services from sales CRM to CMS. But not all customers or clients will be interested in sales CRM and CMS at the same time.

Your preference customization button should allow subscribers or leads to choose their preferred topics, adjust email frequency, and request additional changes anytime.

Tip #10 – Never stop optimizing

Newsletter optimization is for every email marketer and B2B business. There’s no one-size-fits-all subject line or email body.

So you need to test different templates using the A/B testing feature in your AI-driven email marketing tool. The reports from your previous newsletters can be used to improve the subsequent ones.

For example, you can figure out the best time for sending newsletters, the content type that brought more conversions, and many other metrics.

By integrating these reports, you can easily create a b2b newsletter sequence that is too good to be skipped.

How Do You Grow a B2B Newsletter?

Regardless of how great your email content is, you need real-life leads to read it. The more leads or subscribers you have, the higher your sales conversion rate.

You can grow your company newsletter list by utilizing the following methods:

Check-in your existing customers

You probably have previous and existing customers’ details in your database. Extract their information and add them to your newsletter. There is a high email open rate from existing customers since you already have a good relationship with them.

Use email subscription prompt on your website

Utilize the online presence of your business to generate more leads. Grow your b2b newsletter by integrating a popup box for email subscription on your web page. You can also add a little offer to persuade visitors into dropping their details.

Buy cold email list

One of the fastest ways to grow your B2B newsletter is by buying cold email lists from online list providers. You should do a thorough research on the provider you’re getting your list from to avoid getting outdated emails.

Generate leads from webinar signups

Chances are that you will organize webinars to educate and inform your clients or potential customers. Don’t end your webinars with a mic drop. You can request the details of your attendees and ask for their permission to be added to your company’s newsletter.

Create relevant content

Sending irrelevant emails to your subscribers will lead to a drastic rate of unsubscribes from your email list. You need to provide genuinely engaging content tailored to their needs.

Conclusion

Investing enough time and effort into crafting yayy-worthy newsletters will help your B2B business gain more ROI than before.

Understand who your target audiences are, and create valuable content for them while also keeping things clear and concise. Also, utilize visual elements through infographics and embedded videos to keep it more engaging.

Finally tip them off their foot with a compelling CTA and watch your sales soar to new heights. If you need help with crafting your next irresistible B2B newsletter, leave it to the experts. Contact the best agencies here.

close

Access our exclusive content!

email