Email marketing and sales: cat hunting dog
Sales should actually love email marketing. Because it fulfills what sales have always required:
The measurability of digital interactions makes it possible for sales to tell sales exactly which interested party or customer is interested in which topic. And not on average, but by name. Multi-stage follow-up processes from interest to preparation of the purchase decision are possible without media disruption. Graduation is then just a stone's throw away. And market research that is based on the actual interactions of email recipients and is therefore more accurate than all conventional survey methods, is included as a side effect. But sales often see this new efficiency dimension of marketing as a threat. Rightly so. Because if traditional sales don't change beloved habits, digital marketing will create a new type of sales:
“Show me where you click — and I'll tell him what you need”
Preparation of financial statements through multi-level email marketing
Traditional sales companies focus on hot leads and existing customers. However, this is often just the directly visible tip of an iceberg. The entire customer potential also includes everyone who must first be guided through a multi-stage information and interaction process towards a purchase decision. In other words, everyone who is below the water line of perception of sales. This is made possible by professional email marketing, which — coordinated with a sales follow-up process — can become a powerful tool for cross-selling and upselling.
Relevance rules
Relevance is a prerequisite for the acceptance of a message. A crux of printed mailings is therefore that all recipients receive the same information — and this is necessarily unspecific and superficial. Email marketing makes it possible to automatically assign specific content elements to each individual recipient via their profile in the customer database. For example, the entire buying center of a company can be provided with correspondingly diversified information offerings: The management level receives information about the economic benefits of a product, for example; the specialist departments are provided with product-related features and services. In addition to the breadth of information, depth is also decisive: email campaigns are “one-stop” offers. The reader must be able to obtain information in every desired depth and detail — ideally right down to the purchase decision.
The link with the fence post
Interactions can only be measured incorruptibly on the Internet, i.e. when the reader does something — e.g. clicks on a link. It is therefore important to summarize every news or aspect of email communication in a short paragraph and then link to more detailed information. As soon as a recipient has clicked on the “Read more” link, the sender knows “more” about them — namely that they are interested in the topic being presented. Together with the more detailed information on the linked landing page, the sender can make another interaction offer, such as a download option for a white paper, an option to order an evaluation CD, a visit to a webinar or an invitation to contact us. No matter how the recipient behaves — it is measurable in email marketing.
Names instead of quotas
Quotas don't buy anything — only people do that. Since emails are only sent to known persons who have given their consent implicitly or explicitly, it is possible to assign the interactions to specific names via tracking. The response analysis therefore shows not only: “17 percent of recipients have read this article,” but also: “The following 659 people are interested in this product.” Email marketing can provide sales with specific lists of names for further processing. Even if a reader doesn't click, it's interesting: A call from sales to that contact would most likely be wasted working time.
With the tennis racket on the soccer field
The measurability of digital interactions therefore enables unprecedented efficiency in the interaction of communication and sales departments — provided that both agree on the rules of the game. In negative terms, marketing can qualify leads until it goes black — if sales don't have the appropriate structures to process these leads, sales figures won't increase. A binding model for the follow-up process must therefore be agreed between sales and marketing. The design of email marketing campaigns can easily be tailored to any type of process. For example, indicators of the “degree of hardness” of a lead could be agreed with sales, at which point it is handed over to sales. That's the theory — experience unfortunately shows that only a few companies have well-defined models of how to handle leads.
Move so as not to be moved
The measurability of digital interactions has fundamentally changed marketing. It has become more objective and more efficient. This efficiency is now being applied to sales. As an opportunity and a challenge. The fiercer the competition becomes, the less a company will be able to afford sales that leaves the enormous sales potential and efficiency gains unused — be it because sales traditionally does not want to be steered in by marketing, or simply because the established structures and habits that have grown up are difficult to leave. But anyone who doesn't move will be moved. The ball is in the sales field.
