Over the years, we’ve used email in lots of different ways to help our clients grow. Discover how you could use email marketing to fuel your inbound strategies.
As with many things, the best way to understand how email marketing can be used is to see it in action.
- Can email marketing really drive revenue generation?
- How can emails turn a new prospect into a first-time customer?
- What can you do to make your email marketing more engaging?
Check out the following three case stories of real-life BabelQuest clients and the email marketing strategies we used for the answers to these questions, and discover the email tactics you can use to fuel your inbound strategies and drive business growth.
To learn more about email marketing and how you can use it to fuel your inbound strategies, download our flagship ebook, ‘How to Generate Leads That Close’, available now.
3 ways we've used email marketing to fuel our clients' inbound strategies
Case story 1: Segmenting VFE’s database to sell, sell, sell
VFE approached BabelQuest for help unlocking the full potential of the HubSpot platform and adopting an inbound strategy that would engage its target markets. With our goals measured in revenue, we needed to help our client launch and sell a series of new products.
But the buyer’s lifecycle for B2B manufacturing can extend longer than a year, so it was important that we could re-engage contacts from VFE’s database who had already started down that journey in order to deliver a tangible impact to the client’s bottom line and generate revenue for each of our quarterly campaigns. Email was the perfect vehicle for this.
“You can never hope to talk to everyone at once and say the right thing. Segmentation is the best way to make sure that you’re treating different parts of your database in different ways.” Gem Rugg-Gunn, HubSpot Platform Consultant, ‘How to Turn a Lead Conversion into a Meaningful Conversation’
Blanket emails weren’t going to cut it; the products being taken to market were relevant to different audiences, so we needed to segment VFE’s contacts into appropriate groups to target them effectively. This would enable us to send relevant emails specific to:
- buyers from certain industries
- users of certain products
- customers at different stages of renewal
HubSpot’s custom objects functionality meant we could neatly label each contact in the CRM with the information we needed to target them effectively and deliver emails that drove direct sales. Our HubSpot platform consultants leaned on their abilities as HubSpot-accredited experts with extensive technical experience to carry this out and enable the email strategy.
The impact of this work on VFE's revenue led to it being selected as the winner of HubSpot's '2021 Grow Better Sales Impact Award'.
Three best practices for creating a successful segmentation strategy
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Case story 2: Nurturing Westminster Commercial Waste’s contacts
We work closely with Westminster Commercial Waste to promote resources like helpful guides that raise awareness for responsible waste management in the Westminster area.
“Email is an important channel in this strategy, helping us to distribute content that grows Westminster Commercial Waste’s services by better informing and educating recipients,” explains Bridget Reid, a senior inbound marketer at BabelQuest working on the account. “For best results, this content is typically delivered as a series of nurture sequences.”
How does this look in practice?
Email #1 thanks the recipient for downloading the guide. It has the guide attached and includes a link to the Resources page. Its open rate is 79% and its click-through rate is 87%.
Email #2 links them specifically to the client’s ‘nine tips for reducing waste’ guide. Its open rate is 65% and its click-through rate is 23%.
Email #3 links them to a page to arrange a visit with one of the client’s sales representatives. Its open rate is 64% and its click-through rate is 15%.
The process is educational, helping to better inform the reader with each send. In this way, it closely aligns with the inbound methodology of delivering value to the prospect/customer.
At the same time, we’re maximising the value of the assets we create for the client and the work we do for them, giving their content every opportunity to reach, engage with, and convert Westminster Commercial Waste’s prospects and customers.
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Top tips when creating your own nurture sequence
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Read more about lead nurturing in this article by our HubSpot platform consultant, Gem Rugg-Gunn.
Case story 3: Using video emails to engage the public sector
In some cases, we apply email marketing tactics to our clients’ sales teams in order to improve the quality, the engagement, and the results they see from their outreach.
“Personalising videos for your prospects and clients is the most powerful way to trigger a response,” explains Michael Litt, CEO of Vidyard, when we once asked him about the possibility of using video to improve sales outreach response rates. If your nurture sequences are underperforming or your sales team’s emails are falling on deaf ears, personalised videos could significantly impact the way people interact with your emails.
We worked with a client in the public sector to support its sales team with video content. To do this, we created three video types:
- one introducing the business and its services
- one focusing on the benefits of using those services
- and a third with an offer, in this case a free audit. For each, the call to action was to book a meeting or get in touch
The videos were then emailed to anyone from the client’s database who had made an enquiry, with the emails themselves tailored to the specific services (or in some cases, geographic location) captured from the enquiry to improve personalisation.
Using video to make your emails stand out isn’t much more work than actually creating a well-written email and it can really stand out when the recipient opens it. It’s more visual and the videos can often be used on the website to maximise the value you get from them.
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The practicalities of getting video into your emails You’ll want a video tool your team can use to quickly capture video content and easily insert it into your emails. We love Vidyard — check out its website to find out more. |
Discover 20 more ways businesses are making and using video for inbound marketing.
What are the best strategies of email marketing for you?
The best email marketing strategies are always going to depend on the unique make-up of your database and your industry.
- As a general rule, your contacts might respond best to longer-form, more detailed email copy
- They might engage better with more personable video content
- One tactic might yield higher open rates, another better click-through
The case stories here aren’t exhaustive and they won’t work for every company across every industry, but we do hope they inspire you to experiment with your email marketing and see what works best when it comes to fuelling your inbound strategies.
The most successful marketing is often the result of trial and error, and email is no exception. What are your emails saying about you and how do your contacts respond?
To learn more about email marketing and how you can use it to fuel your inbound strategies, download our flagship ebook, ‘How to Generate Leads That Close’, available now.
