B2B e-mail campaign setup checklist

At first, we will look at the detailed steps of setting up a campaign but at the end of this post, you can find the full checklist in bullet points.

Step 1: Think about business objectives and define a mailing strategy

Set your goals to drive growth to your company. Maybe yours is to boost sales, share ideas or increase brand awareness of your company in your market niche. The next step is to select the type of e-mails you want to send based on your target group and define content a KPI-s. Types of e-mails can be:

1. Newsletter

2. Announcement

3. Sales offers

4. Promotion

The e-mail marketing plan should be integrated with the company’s overall marketing goals. E-mail marking is the perfect tool to increase customer loyalty and drive more conversions.

Step 2: Choose an e-mail marketing tool wisely

Assume that your business has an ERP, CRM, or E-commerce solution implemented. To save time and money, you should look up whether these providers offer e-mail marketing services or integrations with marketing tools. Nowadays many systems are integrated with the Mailchimp (URL) platform, which offers a wide range of possibilities including a free version. An important step is to consider your possibilities, gather information, and choose the best option for your company. The key is to realize, that unified best-practices don’t work in every situation and you should always choose what fits your company the best.

Step 3: Create an audience list

In case you have your list of customers in your business management software, an audience list will have to be exported from it based on pre-defined criteria. In Cloudempiere, we set conditions within target lists that fill the lists with data. We export the list of subscribers from software in the accurate Mailchimp format, then import this list into Mailchimp. At this point you need to check that information is filled out accurately and correctly.

Step 4: Design a fancy template

Easy structure, relevant content and beautiful design are the 3 most important aspects in this step. The design can be built in your tool’s drag and drop builder, which enables you to structure the content as you want. Many tools offer pre-structured HTML templates that can be configured and tied to your needs.

Draft the structure and produce content

Always remember that the most important motive should be: less is more. Use headlines, body, CTA buttons, and images in a balanced amount that appeals to the eye. Remember to call your subscriber to take action. To impress the subscriber, the best is to use a small amount of text in your e-mail.

If you have your designer, you can provide him the relevant information and input, as your corporate identity (design manual), logo, quality images, products you want to mention, and naturally your goals with the campaign.

E-mail image attributes

First, you need to choose which image format is best for your media. You can choose from JPG, PNG and GIF. If you want a transparent background, use PNG images. A regular image can be in JPG or PNG format as well, but at JPG you could lose quality. Lastly, GIF is suited for animated photos.

Use quality images, but remember to optimize the size to reduce image loading time for your subscribers.

Step 5: Create campaigns and send emails

Each campaign will need to be linked to its audience, have a subject line and preview text. Our recommendation is to use emojis to make a bigger impression on your subscribers. You should choose these accurately for your target group and marketing strategy.

Step 6: Report and evaluate

In e-mail marketing apps you can see a report of your campaign including basic information about open rate, click rate, and other. Everyone is happy when the results look great and people love the content we share. But what if the opposite is true?

If more people unsubscribe, you should always ** analyze** why it happened and take an action. Make sure you understand why it happened and change some things (e.g. the frequency or type of the campaigns).

We recommend you take the above steps to set up a basic B2B e-mail campaign. Later there are some additional options like automation of e-mails, setting up customer journeys, and deeper segmentation of subscribers. We wish you the best in your next e-mail campaign and hope that we could help you in kicking off your project.

Your ultimate B2B e-mail marketing checklist:

1. Set up your goals
2. Select the type of e-mails you want to send
3. Integrate with the overall marketing plan
4. Define e-mail campaign KPI’s
5. Choose a tool considering your situation
6. Check if all subscriber information is filled out correctly
7. Define export criteria
8. Import your list to Mailchimp
9. Balanced structure
10. Relevant and short content
11. Good-looking design
12. Use accurate images or illustrations
13. Optimise your images
14. Use call to action headlines and buttons
15. Choose the correct image format
16. Optimise image size
17. Create a campaign
18. Choose your audience, write a subject and preview text with a good copy
19. Use emojis in subject or preview text
20. Connect to a template
21. Test and send the campaign
22. Report and evaluate
23. Fix problems
24. Do it regularly