When you combine business-to-business (B2B) email marketing with referral marketing, you create a powerful approach that can create great results for your business. A solid, well-defined email strategy works perfectly with our referral platform to get you more customers and increase your profits.
We know referral marketing works, and that it works really well. Eighty-four percent of people say they trust referrals that come from their friends, a higher percentage than any other type of marketing or advertising. Since email remains one of the most effective digital marketing strategies, it makes sense to use it as a natural part of your referral marketing.
It’s also ideally suited for reaching other businesses. Remember though that a business is made up of the individuals within it, and although you’re using a B2B campaign, it’s those individuals you need to reach.
If you want to build strong B2B email marketing into your referral campaigns, start by creating the right email strategy.
Focus on the Businesses That Have Bought Your Products in the Past
You want to focus on the businesses, and the individuals there, that have purchased your products and services before. If you just start sending out emails randomly, they’re very likely to get deleted, and you could find your email address blacklisted.
Cultivate a list of happy business customers, and segment them so you can develop personalized B2B emails, rewards, and referral schemes for each one.
Find Out How Those Businesses Made Referrals in the Past
If possible, review the activity of your target businesses and individuals, especially when it comes to referrals. Our platform can help you collect and review this information, and also links in with your CRM software to make the discovery process easier.
Tailor Your B2B Email Marketing Strategy to Each Business
You want to avoid “generic” emails at all costs. Remember to personalize each message for the business and individual receiving it. This means:
- Focusing on incentives that matter to businesses — B2B incentives need to be different from B2C ones. Businesses will be interested in early access to new features, money off a future purchase, or another incentive focused on speed, quality, or price.
- Creating unique rewards — every business sector has different needs. Tailor your referral and rewards program to give rewards and incentives that will provide genuine value for businesses in that industry.
- Providing benefits to the referrer and referee — the best incentives are double-sided. Offer rewards that benefit both sides of the referral relationship and you’ll see your shares increase.
- Writing focused, personalized copy — address each individual by name to create a connection. Use further personalization options to build trust. Our platform has extensive features to let you tweak and split-test different types of copy.
Automate Your Email Marketing
When you combine automation with personalization and powerful results tracking, you can easily connect with lots of individuals with personalized copy, and learn what they respond to. Once you’ve gone through and set up all of your referral marketing campaigns you can automate your email distribution. Our platform will track response rates and sharing activity so you can find out what’s working and tweak on the fly.
Optimize Your Message, Copy, Incentives, and Rewards
Testing is a vital part of successful B2B email marketing. You can try out multiple versions of a message, featuring different combinations of copy, rewards, and distribution channels. Because of Extole’s email marketing automation, you can send out variations of your email to different contacts and determine which ones resonate the best.
Our platform features built-in split-testing and enhanced tracking and reporting to give you deep insight and optimization.
Understand the Difference Between Email Referral Marketing & Email Affiliate Marketing
So far we’ve focused on the referral side of B2B email marketing, but there’s another, related type of B2B email marketing — email affiliate marketing. They’re both ways of finding new customers but there are some important differences:
- B2B email referral marketing. In referral marketing, the person making the referral knows the person they are making a referral to. They’re sharing because they can help out a friend, colleague, or peer. Referral marketing is normally based on altruism and sharing their positive experience.
- B2B email affiliate marketing. In affiliate marketing, the person making the referral doesn’t know the person they’re making a referral to, and they’re motivated by a financial reward. Affiliate marketing is motivated by monetary gain and financial rewards.
This means the messaging, copy, rewards, and incentives need to be different for your referral and affiliate marketing efforts. With Extole, that’s not a problem — our technology can be easily customized for any type of referral campaign.
Email marketing is a great way to reach new and current businesses and customers alike, but you need to have the right platform to make the most of it. Schedule a demo of Extole, and we’ll show you how our software can get you the results you want.
