Our top 10 B2B email marketing campaigns [and why they work]

1.   TOP 10     EMAIL CAMPAIGNS BY CTR   Looking for email markeing ideas? You've come to the right place… …  

2.   With a list of more than 27,000 subscribers, I’ve overseen the delivery of 15.3 million emails over the last 12 months… … and that’s just from the unfunnel brand. In total, I’ve managed over a 100 million email sends in various markets last year. I don’t say this to brag… I simply want you to know that I actually do this stuff for a living. This IS NOT another blog post about writing better email from a guy posing to be an email marketing expert. We’ve sent some winning emails over the last year — but we’ve had our fair share of losers too. In this article, you’ll get…   

3.   … the subject line, body copy (word for word) and my analysis of the strengths of our top 10 emails over the last year. We’ve broken down our email campaigns into two categories… 1. Conversion Email Marketing Campaigns​ – Emails that generate leads or sell products and services 2. Engagement‐Based email marketing campaigns​ – Emails that sell content (blog posts in this case) Before we show you our best email body copy, you need to know that… Sometimes you ask an email to do too much  A lot of emails fail because the email marketer doesn’t understand the role of each part of an email. Here’s what I mean by roles… ● the job of the ​email subject line​ is to sell the open ● the job of the ​email content​ is to sell the click ● the job of the ​landing page​ to make the sale (whether that sale is an opt‐in or a purchase) Sometimes we make the mistake of asking the ​email subject line​ to sell the click. Or, we make the mistake of trying to ​sell a product​ in the email body.  

4.   Our Top 10 email campaigns don’t ask the subject line or email body to do more than their job. But that’s not all our top emails did right. Let’s dive in and look at unfunnel’s best emails by click‐through rate and see why these emails got it right. We’ll start with out 11th best promotional email…        

5.   11. Steal These Email Templates… (2.2% CTR)    Another day, another free template giveaway.  

6.   These are headline templates. Are you seeing the pattern? So far we’ve had sales templates, headline templates, email templates, and there’s a reason we keep doing them — they work. In this email the download button really boosted the click‐through rate. It’s a button in an email — you should be 100% utilizing CSS buttons within your own emails. This particular button had ‘Download’ on it and it had an amazing CTR.        

7.   10. “Borrow” All My Campaigns… (2.8% CTR)  Notice a pattern in this blog post – templates, checklists, campaigns and tools. These are things that we have of value that we’re giving away or selling.  

8.   So the beginning of this email follows the theme of curiosity based content. We open with a quick statement — and then drop a link to grab everyone that knew from the subject line that they were interested. People knew before they opened that email that they were going to click the link. You don’t want to talk too much — get your statement out and then a quick link. That’s a typical curiosity‐based email. Then, we give them another reason to click by giving them a benefit… “… easy to follow step‐by‐step checklists.” You either go proof or curiosity first, followed by proof or benefit second, followed by scarcity or proof third. If you follow that linking structure, you’ll start to see really high click‐through rates in your emails.        

9.   9. Lies Gurus Tell vs The Truth (2.8% CTR)  Again…curiosity. Only this time, with TONS of click‐bait planted into the email body copy.  

10.   8. How To Create A Website Design Strategy That  Drives Sales (2.9% CTR)   

11.   What a surprise… templates! This is the theme of our best emails — people want the templates we use because they want the results that we get. It follows the exact same format we’ve been referring to. In this case, it’s the proof. We have undeniable proof of ​website redesigns​ as one of the hottest trends thanks in part to Google and mobile shifts, so we tested these templates. 7. Can I be candid with you? (3.1% CTR)    Again, curiosity is the theme here – this time we add only one Call‐to‐Action…a request for you to inform our efforts moving forward.  

12.   6. [SWIPE] The Ultimate Email Marketing Campaign  Toolkit (3.1% CTR)     

13.   This one is also about templates. (You’ll be seeing A LOT of templates winning the click in these emails!) Going back to what was successful in several emails: it’s all about speed and automation. People love it. Templates, software, tools. This comes out of the gate with a benefit — “Want a way to convert new business?” Then it’s just copy and paste these email marketing campaigns. So this email is gunning for the benefit: the templates. The screenshot also helped. It’s in Word, so it’s recognizable. People aren’t going to be afraid of the software in this instance. Easy to use, highly desirable.        

14.   5. Do This Make Money. Seriously (3.3% CTR)   

15.   This subject line piques curiosity — the words “MAKE MONEY” and “SERIOUSLY” draw the reader into the open right away. Going into this it shows a very intriguing picture, ties it back into a story, and then talks about a lesson learned.        

16.   4. [VIDEO] 3 Market Entry HACKS (and beyond)    This email has a simple formula: Get [desired result] Without [undesired result]  

17.   3. You On Linkedin? (3.9% CTR)    Once again we have a downloadable resource available within this piece of content and the offer (content) is strong — in this case it is a ​Linkedin visual guide​. The question peaks interest…because it’s almost rhetorical.  

18.   2. The New SEO Toolkit Everyone Is Talking About  (5.4% CTR)    Once again…​templates​. The subject line invokes social proof – so fear of loss is dominantly the overwhelming theme to get the email both opened and clicked.   

19.   1. The Ultimate List Of Blog Ideas For 2016 (9.2% CTR)    We’ve reached our #1… what do you know? ​It’s a freebie​. Once again we have a downloadable resource available within this piece of content and the offer (content) is strong — in this case it is a mind map.  

20.   The offer is to get over 50 blog post ideas and three of those blog post ideas are listed as bullets in the email copy. Notice anything special about the three blog post ideas that are chosen?… ● The SAQ Post ● The Guard Down Post ● The Attack Post Yep… they are all a bit curious and new. We could have chosen to feature the ​blog post ideas​ you already know about like The List Post, The Link Round Up, etc. but that would have decreased clicks. Steal My Email marketing campaign templates