Email Courses For B2B Companies: A Quick Guide

Email courses offer a structured method to educate potential clients and warm up leads. That makes them particularly effective in the B2B space, where trust and expertise are valued at a premium. With that in mind, we created this quick primer on email courses for B2B companies. 

In this article you will find a few reasons you should consider creating an email course for your B2B organization. We’ve also shared a simple three-step process for setting one up.

Let’s check it out below.

Why Email Courses For B2B Companies Are Important

Before you create an email course for your B2B company, it’s valuable knowing why they’re so important. Thankfully, there are a ton of benefits to having one. Here are four that apply to most B2B companies.

1) Establishes Thought Leadership

Done right, email courses can be quite focused and in-depth. This gives B2B companies the chance to dive into complex topics. This approach is quite appealing to potential customers because B2B audiences are usually looking for authoritative expertise. 

2) Creates Deeper Engagement

Email courses are great from a psychological perspective because they essentially train your audience to engage with you repeatedly. For each email they open, your leads are deepening their relationship with you ever so slightly. Give away enough value, and an email course can be the catalyst for much more engaged interaction with your brand.

3) Makes It Easy To Nurture Leads

Related to our last point, B2B email courses also make it easier to nurture your email leads. Let’s assume you pack each email with as much value as possible. Because of this consistent value, the essential cycle of lead nurturing becomes much more automatic. Great emails can guide leads further down the funnel without feeling pushy. This can have a ton of benefits to your organization. 

4) Can Be Scaled

Email courses are powerful because you “set it and forget it.” With the exception of periodic updates, you really only have to create a B2B email course once. After that it does all the work for you. This means that it’s constantly working in the background while you and your team focus on other tasks.

Email Courses For B2B Companies: 3 Steps

1) Planning Your Email Course

Just like any larger piece of content, planning comes before creation. There are a number of ways to approach this first (but essential) step. Here are three parts to planning your checklist:

Identify Your Core Topic

Who is your target audience? What are their main pain points? How can your company’s expertise fix this for them? Answer these questions and you have discovered your core topic. For B2B companies, this might be anything from “How To Implement A New CRM System” to “Best Practices for Supply Chain Optimization.” Here are two important tips that will help you find your topic:

• Research: What are the most common questions your customers have? You can find these quickly by interviewing your sales team.
• Check trends: There are always certain topics that are “top-of-mind” for your industry. These can be a great place to find ideas for your email course. Tools like Google Trends (or even just social listening) are a great source of information. 

Define Course Objectives

What should your participants “achieve” by the end of your email course? Making this clear (and directly promising it) is a great way to build interest for the course. This will also give you focus. By having a clear promise you are trying to deliver, it’s much easier to maintain consistency across each lesson.

Segment Your Audience

Not all your leads require the same kind of content (or even the same depth of content). For example, if the leads you are targeting are high-level executives, a general overview of a topic might be sufficient. Is your ideal audience full of operations managers? In this case, they would likely appreciate more detailed how-to guides. The main point here: your audience is likely diverse, so you should consider creating more than one course.

2) Structuring The Course Content

Once you have the main topic focus and have started creating your email course, it’s time to structure it. This step is essential. After all, even if your B2B email course has the best content in the world, it doesn’t do your leads much good if it’s messy or disorganized. Here are a few things to consider. 

Break It Down Into Manageable Lessons

In the B2B context, an email course will usually be somewhere between five and ten emails. This is often delivered over a few weeks. As for each email, it should tackle a specific sub-topic or step in a process. This makes the learning more manageable and less overwhelming. 

Offer Actionable Takeaways

B2B professionals want tips that they can apply immediately. This is why each one of your lessons should provide some kind of clear “next step.” This not only ensures that they are getting value out of your B2B email course, but keeps them engaged throughout the entirety of it.

Include Real-World Examples

Nobody likes unsubstantiated claims. If you are going to make a strong argument, you need to back it up. This is where case studies or mini success stories can work to validate your point. For example, maybe you illustrate how actual companies have used the methods that you share in the course. This is a great way to boost your credibility (and is more likely to result in a sale).

3) Delivering And Promoting Your Email Course

Now it’s time to actually promote and deliver it. Below you will find specific advice for each one of these essential steps.

Promote Your B2B Email Course:

• Landing page: You will usually set up a landing page to promote your course’s benefits. This page is essential because it’s where you will do most of the “convincing” of getting people to sign up. Be sure to follow best practices for high-converting landing pages 
• Social media and LinkedIn groups: If you’re targeting B2B professionals, LinkedIn is a great place to promote your email course. Depending on how active you are on various platforms, you can also post teasers from within the course to get people to sign up.

Deliver Your B2B Email Course

• Pair it with the right ESP. In all likelihood you are already active within your email software. Now is a great time to educate yourself on the most logical flow and triggers that can make your email course as valuable as possible.
• Personalize where possible. Most email softwares will allow you to tailor your email course to specific data points. This is all about the right segmentation. Even tiny details like a person’s job title can drive engagement and increase the effectiveness of your email course.

…

Are you an enterprise, nonprofit or small business looking for help on your website? Give us a shout! We provide a free consultation. Email us at info@lughstudio.com or call us at (718) 855-1919!