Want your customers to engage more with your company? A customer email, often called a company newsletter, might just be the thing to get them moving in the right direction. You won’t be alone in thinking that regularly touching base with your customers and prospects via a newsletter is a good thing. According to Hubspot, 86 percent of businesses choose email over any other type of channel when they discuss any business-related topics.
But you don’t want to just communicate sales information to your customers and prospects—that can be a big turnoff and land you on the unsubscribe list. B2B marketers today need to distribute content that can help their customers learn more about the company’s expertise without it coming off like a sales pitch. That means the content needs to be relevant to businesses’ specific pain points, enabling existing customers to do more and helping prospects understand why your company is one they want to work with.
While bringing on new customers and “upsizing” existing ones may be the ultimate goals, there are other potential results that every company should be striving for with their B2B company emails, including:
- Building a relationship with prospects and customers through storytelling that encourages them to keep coming back for more content
- Improving the company’s reputation by showcasing your company’s market leadership (and your executives’ Thought Leadership) in your target markets
- Positioning your company well in its key vertical markets
Each B2B email should start with a theme that means something to your business. For example, a topic might be Supply Chain issues, or the impact of the lessening pandemic on businesses, or something broader, like Customer Experience. Putting together a brief content calendar can help you really hone your content to best fit it into topics your customers and prospects will find valuable.
Once the themes are in place, here are five things that every good customer email should contain:
- An overarching Thought Leadership piece from your executives that provides high-level guidance of where your company stands on specific issues. While customers want to hear the nitty gritty of your product details, they also want to know how the company is helping them solve some of their biggest problems.
- A customer case study featuring different vertical markets each issue, depending on your theme. No one tells your company’s story better than your own customers. They know their challenges and how you helped solve them. So let them speak up about how great your company is. If you can’t get a customer that fits your theme, a use case is the next best thing.
- Links to recent news stories or internal blogs about the company. Hopefully your hard work is paying off in the form of interviews and Thought Leadership articles. If so, plan to feature one or more of these articles or even an internal blog in your customer email each issue.
- A product update or ecosystem partnership. Agile companies make frequent updates to their products, and your customers want to know about them. Devote some space in each issue of your newsletter to showcase what your team has been hard at work developing.
- A call to action. What do you want customers and prospects to take away from your newsletter? Download your latest eBook or white paper? Contact your sales team for more details? Whatever it is, make your call to action stand out with visuals. And don’t be confusing – have one CTA, not three or four.
Customer emails are a great way to keep your company top of mind with the people that are looking for solutions like yours. Both existing customers and prospective clients can benefit from your experience and expertise when it comes to solving their biggest challenges. Developing a theme and keeping content consistent from issue to issue can help you engage with your audience in a meaningful way that helps you both grow your business.
Want to learn more about how to create an engaging customer email? Contact Calysto.