Your Guide to Creating B2B Email Marketing Workflows That Boost Conversions

The pressure of ROI, growing competition, and a fast-changing landscape have turned B2B email marketing into an unrelenting pursuit of sales objectives. Given that B2B models typically entail longer buying cycles, the need to focus your marketing strategy on sustained nurturing initiatives is crucial. Yet, 85% of B2B marketers believe that lead generation is the most important goal and 68% of B2B companies depend on landing pages to generate leads.

While the importance of lead generation cannot be undermined, nurturing these leads the right way is also an equally important component of a successful B2B marketing campaign. Winning leads is hard as it is, and so, it’s important to ensure that the ones you have do not fall off your radar.

Since not all leads are created equal, you cannot nurture them with a one-size-fits-all strategy. What’s needed is a tailored communication strategy based on where a lead is in your funnel. That’s where B2B email marketing workflows come into play.

The Groundwork for Creating B2B Email Marketing Workflows That Convert

Well, as stated earlier, not all leads are created equal. To make sure you nurture the right ones, consistently egging them on toward conversion, you need to lay the groundwork on which you can build effective B2B email marketing workflows:

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is the process of assigning value or a score to each lead depending on the actions they’ve taken on your website, emails, lead magnet, or other channels so far. Naturally, the higher the score, the more likely is the lead to convert.

Before you get started on devising a B2B email marketing strategy to optimize conversions, it’s important to spend some time and effort in tracking your prospects’ behavior and engagement with your business.

Today, there are automated predictive lead scoring tools available that work far more efficiently than a traditional point and map-based approach. Leveraging these tools powered by predictive analytics to devise your B2B email marketing workflows allows you to take on a more proactive approach toward lead nurturing and conversions.

Differentiating between Leads

The leads you generate can be classified into three categories – Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), and Sales Accepted Leads (SALs).

MQLs are leads that reach your funnel through marketing initiatives. However, these leads may not exhibit a readiness to make a purchase yet. SQLs are leads accepted and verified by sales reps as ready for sales nurturing and show a marked interest in the products/services you’re offering. SALs are still somewhere between marketing and sales, ready to be handed over by one to the other depending on their readiness.

Your B2B email marketing workflows must take into account the different categories of leads, as well as focus on turning more and more leads into SQLs.

Separating Conversions from No Conversions

No matter how robust your marketing strategy or sales initiatives, you cannot convert 100% of leads. Some will inevitably fall through the cracks. But what you can do is limit this percolation by taking your B2B email workflows to a deeper level through action-based segregation of leads.  

For example, if you’re offering a free tutorial for your B2B leads, you’d send an email to your MQLs to promote this service. Out of which, some will sign up for the tutorials, and others won’t. Once the tutorial has been rolled out, some of those who signed up will view it, some will take additional action, and some won’t engage with it at all.

At this point, it is vital to divide your workflows to send different emails to different leads based on their actions. Dividing email workflows by actions help keep the messaging relevant and personalized, thereby allowing your leads to make an informed decision and enhancing your scope of conversions.

5 Ways to Build B2B Email Marketing Workflows That Lead to Conversions

With automation tools at your disposal, creating diverse email marketing workflows to nurture and convert different B2B leads is neither overwhelming nor time-consuming or expensive. This is why it is an opportunity you must not let pass. Here are 5 ways in which you can build B2B email marketing workflows that boost conversions:

Behavior-triggered emails

You can trigger emails based on a lead’s behavior or actions on different marketing channels. Create personalized email campaigns that get triggered automatically when a lead takes certain predefined actions, such as gets tagged on a social media channel, submits a signup form on the website, engages with an email, or visits a specific page on your website.

Behavior-triggered emails are an effective tool for following up on a lead’s engagement and pushing them to take the next desired action. This email by Webflow, for instance, gives a quick but pointed rundown on how it can help a small business stay afloat. It’s a great example of an email you can send to B2B leads who are just learning about your products/services and inspire intrigue and curiosity.

Autoresponders

Autoresponders are an essential part of your email workflow, as they allow you to immediately acknowledge a lead for taking a certain action on your website pages or marketing channels. From welcome emails to lead magnets, subscriptions, customer queries, B2B autoresponders are essential to let a business know that you’re invested in catering to their needs.

This email from Email Uplers is a bankable template on how you can use autoresponders to help a lead get better acquainted with your services, special skillsets, and USPs. If they’re comparing different service providers, an email on similar lines could well prove to be the deal clincher.

Automated Drip Campaigns

Automated drip campaigns refer to sequences of predefined, targeted emails sent to subscribers with the objective of achieving specific results. There is a lot of room to experiment with automated drip campaigns. Some of the most crucial for nurturing B2B leads include

• Welcome Workflow: This is used to welcome new subscribers and help them get better acquainted with your business.

• Topic Workflow: Have a workflow ready for different segments on your website so that you can send targeted in-depth information based on the page a visitor was browsing.

• Engagement Workflow: Ideal for return visitors who keep coming back to your website or constantly engage with your emails. Once they’ve passed a certain lead score threshold, you can send them an email that encourages them to finally make a purchase (or take any other desired action).

• Lead Nurturing Workflow: This is an email workflow dedicated to fence-sitters who express interest in your services but stop just short of employing your services. Constant communication is the key to their conversion. It’s a great idea to remind them of what makes you stand out from the crowd every now and then.

Conditional automation

Segregate your leads based on their actions, and send out different emails depending on their level of engagement. For instance, offering a freebie such as a tutorial or a webinar is a great way to get drive-up engagement among subscribers who don’t take any action on your emails. On the other hand, special offers or discounted services are a better fit for the ones who regularly read your emails and click on CTAs but haven’t made a purchase yet.

Automating Email Resends to Non-Openers

You can resend the same emails to those who haven’t clicked on any communication from your side so far with a different (preferably more exciting) subject line. There are automation tools that allow you to fix the number of times you want to resend the same emails to non-openers to improve your odds of being heard.

Conclusion

The common takeaway from each of these strategies to build effective B2B email marketing workflows is personalization. Every lead you’re working to nurture must be made to feel that you understand their needs and are catering exclusively to them. Personalization extends far beyond adding their name to greetings or creating tailored subject lines. These workflows will help you achieve just that.

Need help creating exclusive B2B email marketing workflows for different leads? Our email automation specialists can assist you in your endeavor.