Your B2B email marketing campaign is ready to be launched out into the world. Whether your aim is to drive sales, increase brand awareness or promote an upcoming event, things are about to get exciting. 

But first, you’ll need to prepare your database of B2B contacts. Doing so, thoughtfully and methodically, will ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of your email marketing campaign, and help to avoid any wastefulness – or, worse, illegality.

Segment your audience.

You can divide your contact database into segments based on campaign-relevant criteria such as demographics, purchase history or engagement level. Or you may wish to segment your database into cold, warm and hot prospects, if you have reliable and up-to-date lead-scoring data.

This will allow your emails to be more targeted, personalised and effective.

Clean, update and cull your contact list. 

Regularly clean your email lists to remove any inactive or bounced email addresses. It requires a little time and effort, but it’s always worth updating any changes in contact information to ensure your messages are reaching the right recipients. That account manager you spoke to in 2022 may have long since moved on to a new role, or even a new company.

Other bits of housekeeping for your to-do list: Eliminate any duplicate entries to maintain a clean and organised database, and to prevent redundancy. Check there are no outstanding opt-out requests from ex-subscribers. And scan for any obvious typos – a misspelt name can sink even the most elegant of emails.

Focus on your database’s hygiene.  

Maintaining database ‘hygiene’ – as outlined above – does more than simply allow you to be neat and organised.

A hygienic database ensures that your messages reach an audience genuinely interested in your content. This, in turn, boosts open rates, click-through rates, and overall engagement.

Maintaining a clean database also helps to preserve a positive sender reputation for your business. Internet service providers check a sender’s reputation before deciding whether to deliver emails to the inbox or spam folder. If you’re sending out vast swathes of emails to inactive or invalid email addresses, that’ll do your reputation harm.

Another plus: A clean database will allow you to record accurate campaign metrics. By staying nice and hygienic, you can trust your data on open rates, click-through rates, and conversions, allowing for more informed decision-making.

Comply with relevant regulations. 

It’s vital to familiarise yourself with – and adhere to – email marketing regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In a nutshell, GDPR involves obtaining explicit consent from individuals before sending marketing emails. It requires businesses to be transparent about data usage; offer opt-in options; provide easy opt-out mechanisms; and ensure the security of personal data. Failing to comply with GDPR can result in hefty fines (and disgruntled email recipients).

Test your campaign’s approach.  

Before fully launching your email campaign, you may choose to conduct A/B testing on elements such as subject lines, visuals and content. You can do this by sending variations of an email to a proportion of your database – ideally at least 1,000 recipients, in order to get accurately indicative results – and then tweaking your campaign based on differing levels of engagement.

Alternatively, you can perform A/B testing once the email campaign is fully launched. For example: if you have a sequence of five emails planned, you can send out A/B variants of email one, and then apply the resulting insights to emails two, three, four and five. 

This more agile approach allows you to set your campaign live to your entire database in one go, learning as you go while avoiding a staggered, stop-start launch. (It’s this latter approach that we usually opt for at Lesniak Swann.)

Close the loop between sales and marketing.  

Integrating your email automation platform with your CRM system will help ensure harmonious coordination between your sales and marketing teams. You’ll have a much clearer overview of customer interactions, along with potential paths to conversion. In turn, you’ll extract every bit of potential value from your database.

Track, analyse and tweak your email campaign.   

By implementing tracking mechanisms to monitor the performance of your email campaigns, you can analyse key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. You can then use this data to evaluate the success of your campaign – and also calculate the inherent value of your database.

With tracking working alongside your email automation, you can continually monitor your campaign’s performance, and be ready to make adjustments based on real-time data and feedback. Once you know what’s working and what isn’t, you can spend more wisely and increase your ROI.

This iterative process will also help in optimising your future email campaigns, and the future harnessing of your database.

Ready your responses to engaged recipients. 

Before hitting ‘go’ on your email automation, develop a plan for follow-up sequences based on how your database reacts to those emails.

Whether it’s sending a thank-you email after a purchase, or a breezy reminder about an upcoming event, strategic follow-ups contribute to building and maintaining better customer relationships – and, ultimately, more leads.

Need help with an email marketing campaign? We’ve planned, produced, launched and optimised hugely successful B2B campaigns for companies such as TalkTalk Business, Uber for Business and ANS.

Keen to make your database work harder for you? Let’s talk it through.