Email Marketing: How To Get Corporate Buyers To Opt-In, Open Up and Click-Through
By Anna Johnson on February 18th, 2010Research by IDG Connect, presented at MarketingSherpa’s recent Email Summit, shows that business-to-business (B2B) customers WANT to receive emails about products and services, but such emails need to be compelling, personalized and appeal to individuals’ (as opposed to the organization’s) motivations.
IDG Connect’s research into the preferences of B2B technology buyers indicates that 32 percent prefer email over other methods of acquiring product/services information, compared with only 12 percent who prefer social networks as their means of obtaining such information.
Other research findings are that buyers:
- regard ‘underwhelming offers’ as the biggest weakness of most emails;
- like emails that are personalized i.e. use their name; and
- are more likely to respond to emails that appeal to their individual motivations, in addition to their organization’s motivations.
This is understandable: being human, the average corporate executive who receives an email offer will typically ask themselves, first and foremost, ‘how does this help me?’ and then, as a secondary issue, ‘how does this help my team/department/company/organization?’
For that reason, your B2B email offers are likely to be much more effective if you explain the specific benefits to the recipient e.g. how your offer helps advance their career and/or perform better in their jobs – as well as the benefits to their organization.
According to IDG’s research, buyers are particularly responsive to emails that give them greater insights and ideas. Said IDG’s Bob Johnson:
“Buyers want to do good job for the organizations work for, but they’re also looking out for number one. So much of an investment decision, no matter how rational and practical people say it is, is really more emotional.”
February 18th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
Hehe, underwhelming offers. Yeah, my inbox overflows with those lately.
Interesting study, thanks!