new! listen to article
B2B marketers have many opportunities to improve their email marketing programs.
This is a positive interpretation of one of the core findings of the first State of Email Trends report by Litmus and Oracle Digital Experience Agency. The study found that B2B brands are adopting a wide range of email marketing trends at significantly lower rates than B2C brands.
We know that B2B brands don't like being compared to B2C brands. Some people think this is unfair, while others think it's just unfair. It's apples and oranges.
To be honest, I think the difference is like apples and pears at this point.
For example, B2B brands used to have a very different delivery landscape because most businesses ran their own email servers. Many companies today use G Suite or Office 365. They use the same spam filtering algorithms and email rendering engines as consumers' inboxes, Gmail.com and Outlook.com.
Additionally, many employees access their work email through Apple Mail and other mobile email apps that consumers also use. And since all his B2B customers and prospects are also consumers, the experience they have with his B2C brand will influence their expectations about how the B2B brand should treat them.
While there is no denying that there are no significant differences between B2B and B2C businesses, over time the differences have narrowed, justifying the differences in email marketing elements, tactics, and technology implementation found in the study. It's not something you do.
Again, this means B2B brands that take advantage of current real-world opportunities can improve program performance.
Trends led by B2B brands
Based on a survey of nearly 500 email marketers, State of Email Trends features 38 email marketing elements, tactics, and technologies. Of these 38, there are only three that B2B brands use at least 25% more than his B2C brands:
- Account-based marketing (ABM) (206% more likely to use than B2C brands)
- Video (76% more likely)
- Emotion tracker (26% more likely)
While ABM isn't surprising, it was great to see B2B marketers using video at a higher rate in emails. And sentiment trackers…for sure.
Trends B2B brands are lagging behind
Meanwhile, B2C brands were at least 25% more likely to use 21 of the 38 tactics and technologies than B2B brands.
- Loyalty and rewards programs (288% more likely to use than B2B brands)
- AI-powered product and content recommendations (286% more likely)
- Machine-triggered email (174% likely)
- Email triggered by action (157% likely)
- Emails triggered by date (124% more likely)
- Universal holdout group (119% more likely)
- Multivariate test (102% more likely)
- Interactivity with HTML or CSS (101% likely)
- Live or real-time content (101% more likely)
- Email annotations and schemas (96% likely)
- Website pop-ups to get subscribers (75% more likely)
- Dark mode optimization (61% more likely)
- No-action emails are triggered (50% more likely)
- Send time optimization (45% more likely)
- Email triggered by an action (42% more likely)
- Subject contains emojis (40% more likely)
- Animation (35% more likely)
- Personalize using dynamic content (33% more likely)
- Subscriber re-engagement programs and inactivity management (33% more likely)
- Modular email architecture (32% more likely)
- Comprehensive and/or accessible coding techniques (25% more likely)
This is a long list, but there are some major differences. And if you think these are the result of differences in average company size between B2C and B2B brands, the data doesn't bear that out.
Still, it's reasonable to ignore some of these email elements, tactics, and technologies as fundamentally inapplicable to the majority of B2B brands. Others have relatively low adoption rates or relatively low impact.
With that in mind, here are the email trends I think are:
The biggest opportunity for B2B brands
To state the obvious, all of the above trends represent potential opportunities depending on your industry, audience, and business model. But if you haven't seen them yet, here are four you should check out.
1. Loyalty and Rewards Program
Old-school, transaction-oriented loyalty programs reward members for additional purchases. These mean little to most B2B brands. However, modern loyalty programs are engagement-oriented and reward customers for engaging with your brand in a way that makes them more loyal customers and stronger brand advocates.
This modern-style loyalty program is something many B2B brands should consider.
For example, when customers read blog posts, attend webinars, subscribe to newsletters, watch how-to videos, become certified users, or attend user conferences, they become more loyal and powerful. Are you an evangelist?
If so, you need to incentivize this behavior through your loyalty program and craft your rewards to avoid cheapening your brand with discounts.
2. All types of triggered emails
Whether triggered by an action, inactivity, date, operational update, or machine, automated emails are the most productive emails you'll ever send. All brands should regularly explore opportunities to address key moments in the customer journey.
Any point in the journey where there is friction is an opportunity to use automation. The possibilities are endless. (Oracle's Automated Campaign Ideas checklist (no form downloads) includes over 110 events that can trigger emails.)
Set a goal to start, expand, or revisit at least four automation campaigns this year.
3. Website pop-ups to get subscribers
There are two important truths to realize about pop-ups. (1) Consumers hate pop-ups. (2) Very effective.
The good news is that consumers won't hate your pop-ups if you make them respectful and user-friendly. First, set a sufficient limit on how often you can serve the same visitor a signup pop-up.
You can also easily close the popup for those who are not interested in signing up.
4. Dark mode optimization
According to litmus research, approximately 35% of emails are displayed in dark mode. Considering that most corporate apps have long supported dark mode, it's safe to assume that corporate emails are displayed in dark mode at about the same rate. There are simply too many subscriber experiences to leave unoptimized, especially considering that dark mode can make text and other content unreadable or unintelligible.
Like many other aspects of email marketing, dark mode isn't implemented the same way across inbox providers. Therefore, optimizing for dark mode is difficult. Some tips:
- Add strokes to logos and icons.
- Pay attention to background images and colors.
- The text colors should be white and black to maximize contrast when flipped.
* * *
Again, the 21-item list includes many other trends B2B brands deserve further investment as well. But the four listed above are the ones most likely to make a big difference for B2B marketers.
