B2B Email List: It’s About Quality, Not Quantity [+Ideas]

b2b email list: its about quality not quantity

As you build a B2B email list, you’re confronted with plenty of temptation to do the wrong thing.

Should you buy that email list?

Should you fill your landing pages with lead magnet forms to grab as many email addresses as possible?

You’ll come across plenty of bad advice out there.

With email lists, it’s best to take things slow. A couple of dozen dedicated, engaged, and interested subscribers are much more valuable than hundreds of subscribers who never open your emails or don’t want to hear from you.

Here’s how to build a solid business list from the ground up.

Why Your Lead Magnet Forms Create a Problem for Your B2B Email List

B2B veterans may find this hard to believe, but your buyers are millennials and even generation Z.

They’ve come to expect consumer-centric experiences everywhere they go. You may not think that personalized and interactive features aren’t important for buyers, but they are.

65% of businesses say they will seek out a new vendor if a company doesn’t bother personalizing their experience. Meanwhile, research from Think with Google says that B2B buyers spend two to three hours each day conducting research from their smartphone.

Furthermore, by 2020, 70% of all B2B Google searches will happen on mobile devices – up 20% from 2019!

Now, it’s time to talk about that lead magnet form.

It’s holding back your B2B email list. Genuine leads who may want to stay in touch with you see that form while they’re trying to read your blog on their phone and run for the hills.

A solid email list filled with engaged subscribers starts with people who genuinely want to hear from you. To do that, you need to remove forms from your website vocabulary and develop other ways to collect email addresses.

Source: Think with Google

6 Tips for Creating a High-Quality B2B Email List

Now that we’ve explained how forms are holding you back, it’s time to go over a few ways to build a solid B2B email list.

Remember to put yourself in the shoes of your audience – or each audience if you’re using ABM strategies.

  • What would prompt them to want to supply an email address?
  • Why would they want to hear from you?
  • What type of content would they enjoy and in what format?

Once you put yourself in the mindset of your leads, it gets easier to create an experience they want and your leads will skyrocket.

1. Don’t Purchase Email Lists

It’s just a bad, bad, bad idea.

From a marketing standpoint, these people don’t want to hear from you – no matter how qualified the seller claims they are. If they don’t remember giving you their email address, they’re going to get angry.

From a legal standpoint, it’s a gray area at best and illegal at worst.

Sending emails to purchased lists puts you at risk for getting flagged as spam. When that happens, it damages the reputation of your sending IP address which means that emails you send in the future are more likely to end up in the spam folder.

You’re much better off starting out small and only following up with subscribers who have voluntarily opted-in to your B2B email list.

2. Start with a Mobile-Friendly Website

Over 70% of subscribers will delete your email in under three seconds if it’s not formatted properly for mobile.

If your landing pages aren’t mobile responsive, why would they expect anything different from your email list?

Start the relationship on a high note by making sure that every landing page, every blog, and every piece of content is 100% mobile responsive. You never know which piece of content is going to spark a person’s interest enough to hand over their email address so always be prepared.

3. Focus on Providing High-Quality Content

What type of content do B2Bs prefer to consume?

If you’re thinking whitepapers and case studies but scoffing at podcasts and videos, it’s time to re-evaluate your content marketing.

49% of B2Bs consume video during the buying process while 65% say podcasts are valuable pieces of content for learning about a company.

Figure out what types of content your target audience prefers and create content for them.

4. Use Human Verification Methods

There’s one big problem with collecting as many emails as possible: you’re stuck with crappy or even irrelevant leads.

Not only is this a waste of time for your sales and marketing departments, but it also ruins your data. According to research, over 62% of businesses say their data isn’t accurate.

Is it any surprise that most businesses also say they’re having trouble scaling and implementing an effective personalization strategy?

Personalization tactics require current and correct data. At Hushly, we use a human verification system to cross-reference email addresses and make sure that our clients are only accepting high-quality leads from real people.

5. Get Rid of Gated Content and Forms

The only way to create a user-friendly experience for your visitors is to get rid of forms. No one likes them and no one will miss them.

Instead of putting your best content behind a gate and form, give your visitors a sample and continue providing them with what they came to your site for—great content.

They’ll give you their email address to download the full versions of things when they’re ready.

6. Use Self-Nurturing Landing Pages

Leads like to educate themselves at their own pace.

They don’t want to read one blog post, give you their email address, and then wait for a phone call. They want to binge all your content in one afternoon after coming back from lunch.

At Hushly, we recommend adapting Netflix style algorithms to offer personalized content with features like adaptive content hubs. When a visitor sees the value that your company can provide, they’re more likely to give you their email address.

Ditch Forms and Skyrocket Leads Today

With Hushly, we guarantee to increase your lead conversion rate by 51%. By removing forms and employing tactics like self-nurturing landing pages, content bingeing, and adaptive content hubs, you can create an environment that puts your visitors above anything else.

Create a visitor-centric experience and watch your B2B email list grow! Check out how Hushly works now!

Why Do B2Bs Need Self-Nurturing Landing Pages to Turbocharge Leads?

How do you spend your free time away from work?

If you’re like most people, you enjoy watching your favorite Netflix or Hulu shows, listening to your favorite curated Spotify playlists, scrolling through Facebook, and shopping through your favorite app.

Top apps like these all have one key feature in common: endless streams of personalized content.

I’m willing to bet that when you visit a new website, you feel frustrated if it doesn’t live up to the UX and personalization standards set by tech giants like Amazon, Ali Express, and Facebook – even if you don’t realize it.

Well, your B2B buyers feel the same way about your website.

According to the latest research, 62% of businesses will consider switching vendors if a brand doesn’t even try to personalize its communication.

Self-nurturing landing pages are the answer to generating more (and higher quality) leads while meeting buyer expectations.

Why Your Form is Outdated

According to research from Google, 50% of B2Bs conduct searches from their smartphone with the average buyer spending an average of three hours each day on their mobile device.

By next year, this figure will skyrocket to over 70%.

self-nurturing

Source: Google

Your website might be optimized for mobile browsing with a responsive design, but what about your lead magnets and landing pages?

If you’re nodding your head “yes” but still using forms, your website isn’t completely mobile-friendly. Let’s get real: no one likes filling out forms—least of all B2B buyers on their phones. It’s just not a fun experience.

Sure, if there’s an emergency like time-sensitive concert tickets or event registrations, you’ll race through the form – but that’s the exception to the rule.

I promise that no B2B buyer is arriving at your eBook, report, or authoritative blog post and thinking “Awesome! I’m so glad I can give another company my email address, job title, and name just to access this piece of content!”

Forms are holding you back. Self-nurturing landing pages are the future.

Self-Nurturing Landing Pages: Your Roadmap to Generating Leads

Ditching forms needs to be part of a broader personalization strategy.

By implementing the following strategies, you can generate not only more leads but higher quality ones.

Boosting access to your content means that people won’t hand over their email address unless they’re 100% confident that they genuinely want to stay in contact with you.

Personalize Their Route Based on Weather Conditions

B2B marketers across the board say they struggle to leverage data across multiple sources.

That’s really the first step to creating a personalized self-nurturing strategy: getting your data in order.

With Hushly, for example, we can personalize content as soon as someone visits your website based on data from various sources. By showing them the best topics and types of content, they’ll stay on your website longer which instantly improves your brand awareness.

Let’s say a buyer visits your website and based on data from other sources, we can tell that they work for an NGO. Your website would then continue showing them similar content that other NGO workers may find interesting, for example.

Drop Dead Ends with Content Bingeing

When someone gets to the end of your eBook or case study, what happens?

If it just ends without other personalized content offerings, you need a new solution. Self-nurturing content bingeing features can help you clean up dead-end landing pages.

Why is this important?

B2B decision-makers like to educate themselves at their own pace and 78% say they consume at least three pieces of relevant authoritative content before committing to a vendor.

Are you allowing buyers to consume content at their leisure – or rationing it?

Put yourself in their shoes: would you rather browse and research an endless stream of relevant content or read one blog post, sign up for a mailing list, and receive content stretched out over an email sequence?

Probably the former.

self-nurturing

Source: Hushly

Supply a Few Route Options – But Avoid Roundabouts of Endless Choices

Roundabouts can help keep traffic flowing but when a city first constructs one, people initially hate it.

Why? Because it supplies too many options and drivers don’t know how to use it.

How would you feel if Netflix or Facebook started showing you random topics that you’ve never expressed interest in? You’d get angry. You may even take a screenshot and share your frustration with friends.

Choices are good. Too many choices aren’t.

By properly categorizing content and employing data-driven personalization tactics, you can create a mini-Netflix on your own B2B website.

Get Them Off the Expressway at the Perfect Time

The average office worker receives 121 emails every day.

The last thing your buyers want is more newsletters in their inbox that they know they’ll unsubscribe from later or just never open.

People don’t mind handing over their email address, but they need to be in control. Let your content speak for itself and let buyers give you their contact information when they’re comfortable.

Instead of using popups, use widgets and other tools that aren’t intrusive and don’t get in the way of accessing most of the content.

Skip the Toll Roads (Fully Gated Content with Forms)

If you haven’t noticed, forms are not enjoyable experiences on mobile devices – yes, even with Google’s autofill feature.

When you do attempt to ask for an email from your self-nurturing landing page, make sure you’re sticking with the bare necessities. At Hushly, we recommend only asking for an email address and country location – that’s it.

You wouldn’t tell personal info to someone you just met on a dating app, right? Let your buyers get to know you a bit before asking for more information.

Generate More (and Higher Quality) Leads Now

Beyond the strategies above, it’s also important to thoroughly vet your leads. Eliminating forms means that you’ll already deal with less fake email addresses, but human verification is also important to prevent non-business emails from slipping through.

Hushly can help you increase your lead conversions by 51% – guaranteed. See it in action now!

5 Reasons You Need a B2B Adaptive Content Hub to Nurture Leads

hushly content hub

You spend a lot of time and energy developing high-quality content to educate, inform, and guide your leads towards conversion.

The B2B buying process is notoriously long and requires a lot of time and effort — shouldn’t your website do most of the work?

Sure, emails and following up are both relevant, but an adaptive content hub can literally educate visitors and make money by letting leads self-nurture while you sleep.

What Is an Adaptive Content Hub?

Think about all the in-depth content you create to deploy throughout your lead nurturing process: eBooks, whitepapers, tutorials, case studies, industry news, authority blog posts, podcasts, videos, social posts.

Now, imagine you have all of that information in one convenient, well-organized, and user-friendly location on your website where visitors and leads can educate themselves and binge on personalized content.

Amazon’s Alexa, for example, offers a marketing resource center filled with valuable information about content marketing, SEO, and other relevant topics.

How Can an Adaptive Content Hub Help You Nurture Leads?

When you use an adaptive content hub to its full potential, your leads can nurture themselves with personalized content streams and personalized content tracks.

1. It Provides Social Proof

Your adaptive content hub is a great place to highlight detailed case studies. After all, 41% of businesses say that evaluating case studies is an integral part of their buying process.

With so much at stake, buyers need to know they’re making the right choice. They need to see other people – just like them – using your product and seeing a benefit.

With personalization you can increase that engagement and content consumption by offering relevant content to those visitors based on their intent signal, industry, vertical, size of company, etc. Leave the guess work of hunting around for content they like and start offering what they want.

Even if you don’t have a detailed case study with all the bells and whistles typed out for each example, you can still provide a list of brands that work with you and offer some quick stats, features, benefits or graphs.

2. An Adaptive Content Hub Can Help You Connect with Leads

If you have a sizable audience and client base, your content hub could include a forum or message board for leads and current clients to connect.

WordPress is an excellent example. Their comprehensive support forums make it easy to contact plugin or theme developers and communicate with other end-users to solve problems in the most convenient way possible. Plus, everything is extremely well-organized by topic.

You can also use a content hub to connect with leads who ask questions or have problems. Include a live chat or a single field for a business email where visitors can submit request for demos, etc.

3. It Offers an Incentive for Leads to Convert

An adaptive content hub is a valuable asset to potential buyers in itself.

First, it provides a solution. Leads can get relevant information up front at every stage whether they are doing research or at the point of making a decision. More often than not they want to get this information without having to talk to someone or send an email. Your adaptive content hub can solve most of their problems.

However, it also shows leads that you understand who they are by providing personalized content results. Keeping not only your brand and products more relevant to them but showing that you understand them.

Look at Sage Intacct, for example. The Sage Intacct Adaptive Content Hub provides templates and how to guides for small business, enterprise companies and has personalized content streams that offer personalized content based on where a visitor is coming from such as a non-profit, software company, etc. Everything from ebooks, guides, video’s are all there and can be dynamically rendered based on who you are.

4. It Demonstrates Your Brand’s Authority

A resource center takes time, energy, and knowledge to create. Today’s web visitors don’t want a static resource center they want adaptive content hubs that can adapt to who they are and what they care about. When you start presenting value to your visitors it shows that you’re genuinely invested in an industry as well as your lead’s success.

With eBooks, PDF files, and other in-depth content, you can really start to throw your knowledge and thought leadership potential around.

Taking the time to develop a user-friendly adaptive content hubs sends a message that you’re highly educated and capable of solving your lead’s problems.

5. An Adaptive Content Hub Keeps Visitors on Your Website

When you stumble across a brand’s content hub that interests you, it’s pretty exciting. You could literally spend hours reading and bingeing on content if the subject interests you enough.

Providing a wide-range of highly-personalized content will keep visitors on your website. Not only that, but it will encourage leads to return to your website for more information.

Connect with Your Leads on a New Level

To develop an adaptive content hub, you’ll want to gain a comprehensive understanding of your audience segments and personas. Start compiling resources based on data you’ve collected like problems your clients face, unique features of your service, and anything else you think people would find useful.

Personalization is the key behind all content marketing – including your adaptive content hub – learn how Hushly can help skyrocket your conversions by 51% with the power of personalization.