B2B marketing analytics: Your secret weapon for targeted campaigns

There are many marketing superpowers we’d like to have; the ability to stretch time, resources and budgets to name a few. But perhaps the most desired would be a portal to read our audience’s minds, knowing exactly what messages will resonate and how to solve their problems before they know they have them.

While we can’t rely on a genie to grant us these wishes or gain clairvoyant abilities overnight, we do have access to a powerful tool: data-driven analytics. This marketing superpower enables us to understand our audience deeply, anticipate their needs, and create messages that truly connect.

Targeted B2B campaigns, informed by accurate, real-time data can significantly enhance the customer journey, ensuring your campaigns land with the people that need them, when they need them most. Read on to discover how e-commerce analytics can transform your marketing strategies.

There are many marketing superpowers we’d like to have; the ability to stretch time, resources and budgets to name a few. But perhaps the most desired would be a portal to read our audience’s minds, knowing exactly what messages will resonate and how to solve their problems before they know they have them.

While we can’t rely on a genie to grant us these wishes or gain clairvoyant abilities overnight, we do have access to a powerful tool: data-driven analytics. This marketing superpower enables us to understand our audience deeply, anticipate their needs, and create messages that truly connect.

Targeted B2B campaigns, informed by accurate, real-time data can significantly enhance the customer journey, ensuring your campaigns land with the people that need them, when they need them most. Read on to discover how e-commerce analytics can transform your marketing strategies.

E-commerce analytics data for B2B marketing

What e-commerce data should I be collecting and tracking?

E-commerce analytics provides extensive data points to understand your target audience and their needs including:

• Demographics: Get the basics like age, location, job title, company size, and industry.
• Behavior: Track how customers interact with your website and campaigns to identify patterns and preferences.
• Purchase history: See what they’ve bought, how often they buy, and how much they spend.

These insights are invaluable for understanding what drives customer behavior, enabling you to tailor marketing strategies to meet specific needs and preferences. By integrating real-time data from your e-commerce platform with your ERP, CRM, PIM and other systems, you can capture all customer interactions in one centralized, secure location, providing a comprehensive view that enhances decision-making and boosts campaign effectiveness.

What are the steps for creating targeted B2B campaigns?

With the ‘whys’ established, let’s explore the ‘hows’.

1. Define objectives

The best B2B campaigns start with a clear idea of your goals. Whether you want to generate leads, enhance product sales, increase brand awareness, or all the above, your objectives must be aligned with business goals. This ensures your marketing efforts contribute to the overall success of your organization and you stay on track.

2. Consolidate and analyze data

The B2B e-commerce journey is long and complex so you need a single source of truth to deliver relevant campaigns to multiple personas at the optimal moment. The multi-platform integration we mentioned above gives you a complete and precise view of all customer interactions, speeding up processes, increasing productivity, and enhancing user experience. This approach also lowers operating costs, eliminates data silos, and supports dynamic marketing personalization strategies.

For instance, when you notice specific browsing behaviors, send a personalized campaign based on the products they’re interested in. Or the next time they visit, present a personalized landing page with suggestions or offers reflecting their preferences.

3. Segment your audience

Effective personalization is far easier once you’ve segmented your audience into groups based on shared characteristics or behaviors. From this vantage point, you can create personas to bring each customer group to life, helping you understand how best to serve them at every stage of the journey and on which channel.

For example, if you know a customer is interested in a particular product, why not alert them when it goes on sale, or offer them an exclusive bundled deal based on their purchase history? You could even include a how-to guide based on a use case in their industry to show you understand their pain points.

Segmenting your audience also helps inform retargeting campaigns, delivering content or deals that will prompt lapsed customers to re-engage, or triggering email campaigns that reflect trends in sales cycles.

4. Craft targeted messaging

Personalized messaging is the future of B2B e-commerce marketing. Using accurate, current data, you can deliver tailored campaigns that create the right impact with the right audiences. For instance, you could invite people in a certain location to a product launch you know they’ll be interested in, or create versions of a call to action for customers in different sectors. This approach ensures customers feel valued, leading to long-lasting relationships and advocacy.

5. Choose the right channels

To reach different audiences you need to be on the channels they prefer. Consider a variety of channels such as email, social media, and paid advertising, and choose based on audience preferences and behavior patterns. Then use your integrated e-commerce platform to create user journeys that span the different channels; a social media campaign that triggers a targeted email promotion that leads to a personalized, trackable landing page, for example.

6. Track and measure results

Monitoring campaign performance using relevant KPIs is essential for iterative optimization and maintaining a deep understanding of your customers and market. It can also help you identify areas for improvement in your sales approach and alert you to growth opportunities.

Track metrics such as conversion rates, click-through rates, drop-off, bounce rates and customer engagement to gauge the success of your campaigns and use these insights to adapt and refine your strategies continuously. Use A/B testing where appropriate and iterate based on results.

Real-world B2B marketing wins: How analytics delivers results

We’ve talked about the power of data-driven insights for B2B marketing. But how does this look in practice? Let’s dive into a couple of examples that showcase how businesses like yours have used analytics to level up their e-commerce game.

Palfinger: Streamlined ordering, happier customers

Palfinger, a global leader in lifting solutions, wanted to improve their online buying experience. With Sana Commerce Cloud’s seamless ERP integration, they did just that. Customers now enjoy a streamlined ordering process with real-time data and easy access to their order history.

The result? An impressive 80% customer adoption rate, with the vast majority reporting added benefits. Customer service emails dropped significantly, thanks to better information and increased transparency across their 100,000+ products.

Since launching their new e-commerce site, Palfinger has seen user accounts nearly triple, and their seamless SAP S/4 HANA ERP integration has dramatically reduced manual work and errors. They’re not stopping there – with two new web stores in the pipeline, Palfinger is poised for continued growth.

Labelmaster: From complexity to clarity

Labelmaster, a leading provider of hazard communication solutions, faced shipping complexities and manual processing bottlenecks. Their switch to Sana Commerce Cloud in May 2023 brought much-needed automation and a vastly improved user experience.

Despite economic headwinds, Labelmaster experienced a 25% increase in website traffic and gained 4,000 new shop accounts. Their UN number-based product configurator and customized landing pages generated over $240,000 in revenue, proving that Sana Commerce Cloud can handle even the most complex product assortments.

After the migration, sales from their second location skyrocketed by 42%, thanks to Sana Commerce Cloud’s multi-warehouse management capabilities. Shipments arrived faster, orders were processed 50% quicker with fewer staff, and strategic SEO optimizations significantly boosted sales of specific products.