How B2B Is F**king Up Email & Newsletters

B2B marketing is in a crisis. After ten years of declining efficiency and efficacy in our digital channels, marketers are left with no reliable means for getting their online content in front of prospects.

Google is a shifting hedge maze (with AI undermining traditional SEO content and eating TOFU search).

Social media is a lawless wasteland, with branded organic social reach all but dead and paid social media inaccurate and fraud ridden.

The media is only reliable for a privileged few.

Email and newsletters are our last best hope, but after years of abuse by marketers, both are on life support.

Prospects are overwhelmed and jerked around.

And B2B just keeps on f**king things up.

Stop Teaching Prospects To Ignore You

The biggest email and newsletter mistake I see in B2B is a simple one—too much frequency.

Which is bad for three reasons:

1. When you send content frequently, the odds go up that at least some of it will be irrelevant.??
2. When you send content very frequently (like every day), it'll often catch prospects at a time when they’re not receptive or it’s not convenient for them to read it, making your brand an annoyance.
3. Frequent emails and newsletters stretch your content and creative resources too thin, leading to vacuous crap going out. Even if you have a large, dedicated team, content often isn’t finished or published with metronome-like regularity, which can lead to armwaving or half-baked ideas going out.

When a prospect encounters any or all of these issues, eventually they'll stop opening what you send, because you’ve taught them that the odds of any one email or newsletter containing something relevant, engaging, useful, or essential are low.

And that you’re an annoying prick who will just keep tapping away at them like a woodpecker does a tree.

Before you respond with “putting our name in their inbox creates brand awareness,” remember this.

Such awareness is indeed useful for the Fortune 500, or if you’re a brand the prospect has already done business with, because they already know who you are and what you sell.

But if you're neither, your brand won't have these associations, so such awareness may not do you much good at all.

I’ve got numerous B2B brands I’ve never contacted in my inbox. Some have sent me daily emails for months or even years.

Sure, I know their names, but more often than not I have no f**king clue what they sell or why I should buy it.

Should they get more aggressive about telling me? Not necessarily.

I’m guessing these brands have realized I’m not an enterprise customer, and therefore I'm more useful to them as a mouth to spread the word.

End the Bait & Switch

Email is the most used-car-salesy channel in B2B.

Business emails masquerade as personal. Content is offered but a sales pitch is delivered.

It’s often a bad joke.

But a bait & switch doesn’t have to involve the subject line only.

It can involve the content itself or lack of it.

The data is clear. People aren't inclined to click the links in an email or newsletter.

And if yours offers prospects nothing but, you’ll piss them off.

There's nothing wrong with offering some linked-to content.

My company does in our newsletter. But we also have plenty of red meat right there on the page and so should you.

AI Is Killing Vendor Content

Gen AI is capable of more variety than humans could offer, offering interesting possibilities for email sales pitches and content repurposing.

But when it comes to content creation, we're f**king ourselves.

B2B buyer complaints about vendor content shot up last year, with prospects increasingly foregoing it in favor of content from third parties.

If B2B prospects give up on vendor content, any brand without a rockstar CEO or a buzzy product that isn’t in the Fortune 500 already will be f**ked. They’ll be truly f**ked.

And don't hit me with "AI will get better."

Its prose will, but its vacuousness won't.

And here's the kicker.

The more marketers use and rely on AI, the less effectively we'll be able to criticize, edit, evaluate, and police what it does.

When we rely on a crutch, our muscles get weaker.

Harvard research has already shown that high-quality AI makes recruiters "lazy, careless, and less skilled in their own judgment." And the better the AI is, the lazier they get.

And recent data from Microsoft indicates, "Higher confidence in Gen AI is associated with less critical thinking. Gen AI can inhibit critical engagement with work and potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving."

And the same thing will happen with marketers.

Our faculties will decline and be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of what AI puts out.

And if that's not bad enough, the same Microsoft study observed, "Users with access to Gen AI tools produce a less diverse set of outcomes for the same task, compared to those without."

A diverse set of outcomes is otherwise known as "creativity."

Without that, all marketers are replaceable.

And all marketing will be coloring things in.

So What Should B2B Brands Do?

When it comes to email, there’s nothing wrong with mixing in the occasional sales message.

How else are prospects ever supposed to buy from you?

Just be sure to declare such intentions in the subject line.

Also axe any “Hey, look at me” emails you’re sending out.

Bullshit holiday greetings. Announcements only employees would care about. Things like this.

Never interrupt a prospect's day without offering value.

And no, the interruption itself doesn't qualify.

Regarding newsletters, consider making them longer and less frequent.

The more topics a newsletter covers and items it includes, the greater the odds of at least some of that content being relevant and appreciated.

If you doubt an infrequent approach, ask yourself this.

Which would you prefer as a marketer or business owner?

A prospect who’s happy to see you once a month or a prospect who thinks you're a pest?

Who rolls their eyes when they see your name?

Who's annoyed with you every day?

When content and messaging consumption are entirely discretionary (as they are with email and newsletters), prospects must be receptive to it.

You can't annoy them into letting you in.