By Craig Klein, SalesNexus.com CEO
Sending email to sales leads and current customers has proven to be a great way to drive sales. However, because of the “push” nature of the method, it gets a lot of resistance. Small to medium sized business marketers are afraid of resistance from sales leads and that can cause them to hesitate about using this powerful method to reach out to prospective customers.
Let’s look at the facts about email marketing:
Email Delivery Has Changed
You may think of an email campaign fitting into one of two definitions – either it is a newsletter sent to people who want to hear from you – or – it is spam. WRONG!
That way of thinking is extremely limiting…and misses the benefits of automated email campaigns as a fantastic advertising technology. Only recently have marketers figured out how to cross the chasm between those two definitions and it is directly linked to the technologies currently available.
An online CRM can be fully integrated with email campaign delivery. With this marketing automation, it is possible to put the sales lead and the current customer in the center of a business marketing strategy. Emails based on consumer behavior are welcomed and nurture the sales lead until they are ready to purchase.
Consumers Have Changed
You might think that the move to more and more social media outlets would dilute the power of email as a good marketing solution. A recent survey conducted by eMarketer.com shows the opposite conclusion. The daily time spent on email has actually increased in the last three years.
Survey respondents were asked about their frequency of digital activities. In the category of “at least once per day”, fully 97% check their email daily. Other popular digital activities trailed this frequency with 83% using Text/SMS and 76% logging into Facebook daily. It pays to get your message where people are logging in most frequently.
Email Automation Duplicates Success
The old “set it and forget it” promise is not quite accurate in today’s world. Sure, you can craft your email content and plug it into your CRM software and it will deliver the emails automatically. It can all happen without any further effort. Many email delivery companies were designed to do just that.
What is different when email is integrated with CRM software is the ability to quickly and easily see what is working in your email campaigns. When the email automation is fully integrated with your online CRM, reports will give you an alert when emails are opened and content is downloaded. Set up measurement metrics and the data allows you to see exactly what is working. Use this information to drive increased sales and tweak each of your email campaigns to fit what the sales lead wants to read.
Content is Not Always Written
Many would-be email marketers put off creating content. Taking time to sit down and craft written documents that appeal to customers is hard. Developing thoughts and ideas and then bringing them into a cohesive message for an email campaign can be daunting.
The good news is you can create content in many other ways. It would take another article to completely cover all the methods for creating content. So for now, just focus on these two:
- Sit down in front of a camera and tell your sales leads a little about what you know about them. Let them recognize that you feel their pain and want to offer them a viable solution. Be sure to make the video about them and not your company.
- Ethically steal from others. If you give attribution to the original author/creator, people will be happy you spread their content to your email list of prospects. Not only does it give you a quick way to touch your customer, it also validates you as a source of information.
Customers Demand More
Marketing automation is your feedback loop to respond to sales leads and customers. After all, the people who make decisions to buy your product and service insist on being in total control of the buying process. They spend hours in research for every purchase. In fact, in the B2B world, multiple decision makers are doing research and can make or break your ability to influence.
With email marketing as part of your sales process and the CRM involved in the delivery, data, and dissemination of information, you can deliver the individualized experience your sales lead demands. Without this level of marketing automation, it would be almost impossible to give them what they want.
Craig Klein is the founder/CEO of SalesNexus.com which is a leading provider of CRM, email marketing, and lead generation solutions for business-2-business sales teams.
