What lead generation means in B2B email marketing
Lead generation is attracting potential clients and turning them into leads. You can do this through cold or warm outreach.
Cold email outreach is when you contact someone who has not agreed to receive messages from your company. The goal is to introduce a business and start a conversation. If they show interest, they become a lead.
On the other hand, email marketing has to target people who have agreed to receive your business emails. This means you reach a warm audience already interested in your services.
The goal here is to build the relationship and guide the warm audience to take action, like signing up or booking a meeting. This is more like lead nurturing.
To the above, email-driven lead generation and nurturing can help overcome common B2B challenges, including:
- Targeting diverse audiences — You can target different stakeholders within a particular business. Say your business offers a CRM system; your target segment is business owners, CEOs, C-level executives, and financial executives across most industries. Each segment will be hooked by different value points your product can add to their business processes. For example, a CRM system is a scalability solution for a CEO, operation streamlining for the C-suite, and cost savings for financial decision-makers.
- Keeping up with the prolonged sales cycle – As more people are involved in decision-making, the lead nurturing timeline may span months. To stress, you shouldn’t expect a quick response. So, develop a follow-up strategy and track each stakeholder’s engagement (I’ll cover what high engagement is later in this guide) to optimize campaigns.
- Disseminate value-driven content — Targeting different decision-makers throughout the sales cycle enables you to cater to diverse content expectations as you nurture leads. Your content aims to give a 360° view of what value the potential lead gets by signing up to narrow the knowledge gap and dispel doubts.
How to launch lead generation B2B email marketing
Launching B2B email marketing lead generation has some technical and less technical aspects. I’ll cover them all below, following a stepped logical flow.
Step 1: Build a quality email list
Establish inbound marketing channels to collect active target contacts. You need active social media, content marketing, and an SEO-optimized website.
Sender reports on these perks of inbound marketing for lead generation:
- More leads (54% more than from outbound approaches)
- Lower operational cost (3 out of 4 inbound marketing methods are less expensive than outbound)
- Lower lead cost (on average, save $14 on every new lead)
- Higher conversion (doubled average website conversion rate — 6% outbound vs. 12% inbound)
- Better ROI (82% of websites with a blog see a growing ROI from inbound marketing)
So, inbound marketing gets you more leads for a lower price than cold outreach.
Now, how do you build a quality contact list through inbound marketing? Here are the best practices:
- Create valuable content — B2B buyers research online thoroughly before deciding, so show expertise via posts, videos, or infographics that solve problems or answer common questions. Focus on quality, not quantity!
- Use lead magnets and test them — Set up sign-up forms, create landing pages, and offer free resources like eBooks, webinars, or discounts in exchange for contact information. Test a few options to determine which type of lead magnet works best in your niche.
- Host live events — engage your audience with live streams and encourage them to sign up for newsletters or provide emails for follow-up content
- Use polls and surveys — create interactive polls or surveys related to your industry and ask participants to share their contact details to access post-survey insights. Again, you should test this to determine what kind of survey would attract attention.
Step 2: Pick up and set up email marketing software
Choose an email marketing software that offers as many core functions as possible in a single platform to cut time and effort when switching between several tools.
Here are the essential features you should look for in an email marketing tool:
- Safe and usable shared IPs to send deliverable campaigns and keep your sender’s reputation high. You can inspect this info by checking user comments on niche forums and software catalogs.
- Template creation and management options to save time on creating new campaigns and editing email drafts for optimization.
- Template personalization via merging fields, integration with CRM system, etc.
- Automation to send campaigns based on triggers, scheduling, or user actions.
- Recipient management (i.e., dividing recipients into cohorts) for precise audience targeting.
- Email analytics to track engagement metrics like open rates, click-through rates, conversions, and bounce rates — access to this much detail on your campaign performance shows where recipients lose interest in your content so that you can take action to engage them back as soon as possible
- Email testing to ensure your emails render and deliver well before they reach a real audience
Some platforms offer helpful auxiliary options; but note that these aren’t something your campaign won’t do without. Here are the most common ones:
- AI assistance with email templates, personalization, and automation gives you suggestions based on previous campaigns so that you can incorporate proven strategies to get higher engagement.
- Landing page creation within a platform lets you cut operation time with pre-made page templates and easy form setup. You can customize designs to match your brand, add buttons, A/B test, and track how well your page works.
- Social media options let you schedule posts, track results, and manage campaigns across all social channels in one place.
Step 3: Take care of email deliverability
Email deliverability means your emails land in your recipient’s inboxes. If your emails go to spam, your deliverability rate drops, limiting your reach.
A good deliverability rate is between 85% and 95%. Most email platforms help with inbox placement, but it’s good to check it yourself regularly to keep the rate high and stable.
Here’s what to pay attention to:
- Email Service Provider (ESP) reputation — the more reputable ESP, the better the email infrastructure to deliver messages with no issues.
- Domain authentication — set up Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) to build trust with email providers and prevent bouncing.
- Double opt-in — use it to get contacts genuinely interested in your emails and reduce bounce rates.
- Email list hygiene — remove invalid or inactive addresses and unengaged subscribers to keep your list clean.
- Audience segmentation and email personalization — tailor your emails to specific groups to increase open rates and show ESPs that recipients value your content.
- Avoid spam triggers — keep content professional, avoid too many promotional words, and include a plain-text version along with the HTML.
- Test your emails before sending — test your email on different email clients and devices to ensure it renders correctly.
- Set up an email feedback loop (FBL) — once securing a high sender reputation, FBL enables you to find out and remove subscribers marking your emails as spam.
Pro tip: Warm up new domains
If you’re using a new domain, warm it up before sending out email campaigns. Email providers have no data on your new address’ sender reputation. A sudden jump in volume could trigger spam filters, blocking your emails or sending them to spam.
So, start slowly and increase the sending volume over time to build a positive sending reputation. And for this, you can use tools too.
Once your domain is warmed up to the volume you need, apply the tips above in this section to keep your email deliverability high.
Step 4: Prepare content and design email templates
Creating templates is a step towards structured and engaging emails. It also makes setting up repeating campaigns like newsletters or follow-ups easy.
Here’s a simple guide to creating professional and impactful emails for B2B lead generation.
1. Define the purpose of each email
Decide what you want to achieve before writing your email. Make sure it fits your marketing goals and your customer’s journey.
For example, you need to welcome new subscribers and share educational content. Then, promote events if that works well in your niche. Whether there are events or not, the follow-up email flows are critical for B2B, given the long sales cycles. This goes for new leads and prospects (leads who expressed interest) or to re-engage inactive subscribers.
The bottom line is that defining the purpose and understanding the types of email marketing campaigns you want to run guides how you write and design the email. Of course, the goal is to get as much engagement as possible.
2. Structure your email
An intuitive message structure makes it scannable and comforts the recipient.
Start with a short, attention-grabbing subject line and use the pre-header to summarize or extend the main message in a few words.
In the body, begin with a hook that connects to your audience’s needs or interests. Finally, end emails with one clear and direct CTA, such as “Download now,” “Register today,” or “Learn more.”
3. Add content
As indicated, your content should be relevant and actionable to build trust and encourage engagement. This goes for B2B email marketing or any marketing, so remember it as an umbrella suggestion.
Focus on value-driven content like showing the benefits of your service rather than just listing features. Don’t be shy to build credibility with testimonials, case studies, or certifications.
And avoid overly promotional language because B2B audiences prefer solution-focused communication.
Important Note:
What I mentioned above may seem like a lot, particularly since you need to package it into a relatively short email. So, unless you’re sending a newsletter, I suggest focusing on one action, one piece of information, or one case study per email.
The idea is to keep the top-level B2B messaging covering a particular pain point in reasonable detail without too many distractions. Otherwise, your emails might communicate cacophony rather than quality, even if you’re working with great information and data points.
4. Clear design
Your email design should guide attention to key elements like the CTA. Keep the layout simple with plenty of white space to avoid overwhelming readers.
Make the visuals speak for your brand. Use your brand’s colors, logo, and font for a consistent and recognizable look.
To create a clear visual hierarchy, organize information with headings, bullet points, and bold text.
Ensure the email adapts to different screen sizes, especially for mobile users. Add images, icons, or infographics to enhance your message but compress them to reduce loading times.
5. Include legal and compliance elements
Make sure your emails follow regulations like CAN-SPAM, HIPAA (for US), GDPR (for EU) or CCPA (for California). Email compliance keeps your campaign legal, builds trust, and strengthens your professional image.
As a rule, every email should have:
- A visible and easy-to-use unsubscribe link
- Your company’s physical address in the footer
- Accurate sender information
Now that you know how to create email templates and what content to include, here is Adobe Experience Cloud’s example of lead nurturing via email in B2B to inspire you.
