If you’re only thinking of email as a way to send out weekly or monthly newsletters, think again. There are plenty of ways that email can become a valuable way to boost your B2B sales.
Deliver personalized messages that convert
Integrating your company’s CRM with your email vendor package is a great way to create personalized messages that convert customers. That’s because prospects are much more likely to respond to any message if it’s been customized for them – not just by job title or job function, but also by their prior history of engagement with the company. The goal is to send out messages that are as personalized as possible.
Conduct drip marketing campaigns
There’s a tendency to segment your leads into one of two distinct categories – “cold” leads and “hot” leads. The hot leads are immediately picked up by the sales team, but what about the cold leads? Usually, they’re left to get even colder.
That’s where drip marketing campaigns come into play – they’re a great way to push some of those cold leads through the sales funnel. Even better, you can automate these drip marketing campaigns, so you don’t even have to worry about them. The emails just go out like clockwork.
For example, after a recent product launch, you might send out email messages reminding people of what new offerings are now available. Since there is little or no cost associated with sending out email, a consistent drip marketing campaign can have surprisingly high ROI if done right.
Use email check-ins to cross-sell or up-sell
Given the limited resources available to the sales team, some customers may get ignored. But that’s squandering a potentially very valuable opportunity. After all, it’s easier to sell to an existing customer rather than go out and find a new one. So think of email as a cost-effective way of reaching out and checking in with these customers.
Here, too, your CRM can play a vital role, because it can be used to keep the sales team updated with what customers haven’t been contacted recently. If they’re not able to make a sales call, email could provide a valuable back-up option.
Use email data to improve your CRM
Finally, you can use all the information you gather from your email marketing campaign to improve or update your CRM. For example, if you’re keeping track of open rates, click rates, and where people go after they land on your website, then you have valuable data that can be used to make your CRM even more powerful.
Sometimes email gets taken for granted, especially as companies build out their sophisticated marketing technology (“martech”) stacks. But it’s an amazingly versatile and effective component of any B2B marketing campaign, and a catalyst for growing your B2B sales.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.