Rev Up Your B2B Newsletter With These 10 Tips

Is your newsletter struggling to get a decent open rate, or you haven’t sent one in what seems like forever? Or at all, even? Yes, newsletters and email marketing can be daunting to deal with, as there is an ever-changing landscape and so many things to consider before you hit send. The backend of email marketing platforms can look complicated, deterring many small business owners from firing it up. However, we are here to tell you that it doesn’t need to be complicated. In fact, simpler is better. If you’re ready to fix or start your B2B newsletter today, we’ve compiled a list of our ten favorite tips. Keep reading to learn our ten best B2B newsletter tips and how you can feel confident in hitting that Send button as soon as today.

Yes, Newsletters Still Matter

Sometimes, you can’t beat the basics. This is especially true for your marketing strategy and sending out email newsletters. Email is still the king of all marketing ROI, even for B2B businesses. Here are some great email marketing statistics to keep in mind, according to HubSpot:

• Email is the third-highest owned media platform B2B marketers used to distribute content in the past 12 months. (Content Marketing Institute, 2022)
• 81% of B2B marketers say their most used form of content marketing is email newsletters. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• B2B marketers say that new product and feature announcement marketing emails have the highest click-through rate. (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021)
• The biggest blockers marketers face during email production are building (41%), designing (40%), and testing (39%). (Litmus, 2023)
• 55% of emails are opened on mobile devices. (eMarketer, 2023)
• Email ROI is an impressive $36 for every $1 spent.
• 46% of smartphone users prefer to receive communications from businesses via email. (Statista, 2021)

With such impressive stats that just keep growing and growing, it is important to make sure you’re incorporating a newsletter in your marketing calendar. However, making it “worth it” can seem like a struggle. We’re here to tell you, as email marketing experts, that you can start seeing a difference in your analytics after implementing our ten favorite B2B email marketing tips.

Personalize Everything; Don’t Be Generic

Every email newsletter platform offers its users the simple ability to personalize each email. A quick and easy code can be inserted to pull the recipient’s first name and use it as a greeting. Make sure you use this; psychologically, it makes your reader feel better about opening it and their own name will catch their eye every time.

In addition to personalizing your greetings and email bodies, make sure you personalize your own email address. Don’t send your emails from a generic email address. Up the trust and personalization factor by having it come from a human, not [email protected] or [email protected]

Talk About Them, Not You

Email newsletters need to offer some sort of benefit for the reader. Whether that is an offer, a heads-up on a new product or service, or a promotion of sorts, make sure you are emphasizing why this is beneficial for them.

Tap into their problems and pains in their world, rather than just spewing random company updates and news. Nobody likes being stuck in a conversation with someone who only talks about themselves, and this applies to B2B newsletter readers.

This requires knowing your target audience really, really well. Exercises such as empathy mapping or developing an audience persona will help steer this ship so that you can talk to their needs and pain points more directly.

Develop a Schedule

One of the best things you can do for your email newsletter’s open rate is to develop a schedule for it. Monthly newsletters aren’t doing it anymore; up the volume and develop a schedule. Do your best to send an email newsletter at least every week, especially if your newsletters tend to be long. Break them up into smaller chunks.

We promise you, nobody is keeping track of how often you send your emails except for you. While popping up in people’s inboxes too often can trigger an unsubscribe or two, keep the cadence frequent but not annoying. Finding this balance depends on your target audience and their needs, but make sure you’re popping up enough to stay fresh in their minds.

Format It for User Experience

Nobody is going to sit and read your email newsletter for a long period of time. Think about how often you stop and read email newsletters from top to bottom: It’s rare. Rather, we spend a second to skim through to see if anything important catches our eye–THEN we do a deeper dive.

As such, you need to make your email formatted for user experience. And, by this, we mean: Make it skimmable.

Here are some tips for formatting your email newsletter:

• Keep paragraphs short
• Use eye-catching headers (even just bolding the type works great here)
• Use visual breakers, such as bullet points or emojis
• Bold important words throughout longer paragraphs so that people can quickly get the gist
• Don’t use too many colors, images, or video to overwhelm the reader
• When designing an email, make your call-to-action largest so that they know what they need to do

Put The Most Effort in Your Subject Line

Creating a good subject line is the most important thing you can do with your email newsletter. It’s what you should put the most effort into. Stay away from generic subject lines, as they can easily get lost in the inbox sea and give your reader no real reason to open it.

Instead, use some of these tips for creating a great subject line:

• Personalize it
• Ask a question
• Leave a sentence open-ended
• Use emojis
• Keep it under 50 characters
• Create urgency when appropriate, such as with a flash sale or offer
• Use numbers, like the title of this blog does
• Incorporate action verbs so they know what to do before even opening it
• Avoid spam-triggering words
• Create some mystery

Use Photos and Videos Sparingly

Having a beautifully decorated email newsletter used to be the most important thing. Now? Simplicity is key. Plain-text emails are the easiest for people to read; they aren’t bogged down by slow-loading graphics or videos, and they feel more personalized. However, depending on your business, having images or videos can sometimes be a must.

When using media such as images or videos, do not be random about it. Make sure they serve a purpose. Don’t use filler visuals such as color blocks, logos, or memes. Don’t use stock photos either; people know they’re stock images, and it comes off as cheap and untrustworthy.

Instead, only insert images and videos when absolutely necessary. If you have a lot of media that you need to share, put it all on a landing page on your website and guide your reader to that link.

Offer a Solution

With each email you send, make sure you are offering your reader some sort of solution. This means that you should be solving some sort of issue that they have. Why do they want to hire you or work with you?

Become a trusted source to them by giving value with each and every email you send out. You don’t want to just be a megaphone that spews out news or details all the time; make sure you spend the time to shape it in a way that will help them understand why it matters to them and why they need you.

Don’t Repurpose Content

If you are sending email newsletters to someone, there is a pretty good chance that they are also following you in other arenas. This includes social media, your blog, and your other channels.

As such, it is important to make sure you’re creating original content for your newsletter rather than just repurposing existing content. If you want to promote your newest blog, make sure you are using original content in your email to promote it, rather than just pulling sentences from the blog and hitting them with a “Read more” link at the bottom.

While it’s not good to repurpose content for your newsletter, it can be a great idea to do the opposite. Make sure you post a taste of your newsletter on your LinkedIn page to give your followers a sense of the types of things you send out. This is a great way to get new email newsletter subscribers.

Don’t Hard Sell

This is a tough one: If you have an offer or promotion, do not lead with it. Remember: We want to frame our content for the reader. The frame? Solving their problem. Lead with the problem-solver, then add your offer to the end of the email.

There are multiple reasons for this. First, with B2B subscribers, they want to feel like they have a relationship with you rather than being presented with hard sells all the time.

Second, one of the first things that people tend to do instinctively when opening an email is scroll to the very bottom. Adding your offer as a PS will make it seem less like a hard sell, but it is actually placing it in the most important spot.

Promote Your Newsletter

As mentioned earlier in this blog, email marketing will offer your business a very high ROI. As such, getting new, quality subscribers is like gold.

Add subscribe links for your newsletter to as many places as you can, such as:

• Company-wide email footers
• On your LinkedIn page
• A box on the top right corner of your website
• Promoted as part of your company’s social media calendar

Get a Better Newsletter with Navazon Digital

Ready to get your newsletter working for you, instead of the other way around? We are experts in that.

Your email newsletter should be one of the most important part of your broader marketing strategy. If your brand needs help developing that, B2B outreach is one of our specialties, and email marketing is one of the many weapons in our arsenal.

We help businesses increase profits through data-driven marketing, including email newsletters, that expand opportunities and reduce risk. As marketers and entrepreneurs, we understand the value of developing a memorable brand through creativity and consistency.

This is accomplished through targeted graphics, videos, and websites that reflect our proven, time-tested methodologies and detailed analytics. It is an approach that’s proven effective for companies of all sizes, from start-ups and medium-sized businesses to large firms with an international presence.

We are content creators who listen to our clients to formulate ideas and strategies tailored to your unique goals and philosophies.

Thinking through those goals with our analytics-based approach, we study not only your tendencies but those of your competition and the market as a whole. Equipped with this knowledge, we develop a powerful plan, test it, and then roll it out on a modest scale. Once we arrive at the winning formula, we can scale up rapidly to meet even the most optimistic growth projections.

At Navazon, we do not believe in “one size fits all.” Every part of the marketing plan is customized to address your unique niche and positioning strategy. It’s how we excel. It’s why we succeed.

Schedule a free consultation with us now! Visit us at navazondigital.com for more information.