Optimizing Email for Better Sales Closes
The Apollo Theater in New York used personalized email video to thank its patrons for their support. The videos cast each individual into the role of an appreciated superstar—a way of showing patrons how important each of them was to the organization.
“We partner with our clients to figure out how to use the relevant data they already have and match it to the story we’re telling to make a human connection,” Oakley says. “The data could be as simple as your name or job title.”
In other cases, companies can use analytics to improve the relevance of sales email content.
“Companies can use analytics to determine [which people] in the organizations they contact are most likely to respond,” Dickie adds. “For example, if you’re reaching out to telcos as your audience, you might discover that it is more effective to pitch the chief financial officer than the chief information officer. There are also many other attributes in individual profiles that can be studied with analytics and that can guide both marketing and sales in determining which individuals are most likely to buy.”
Dickie recalls one organization that decided not to send sales email to individuals who were not smiling in their head shots. “The company had determined that the individuals that they were cold-call emailing were 3.8 percent more likely to respond to email if they were smiling,” he says.
“It is equally important to be respectful when you reach out to consumers with cold-call email,” Dickie cautions. “Based on individual profiles, marketing and sales can determine how often a particular individual wants to hear from your company and what they would like to hear about. If you take the time to tailor your conversations with consumers on what they are interested in or want to hear about, you reduce the risk of being perceived as an uninvited email that they are likely to delete without reading. Running analytics against individual profiles of the consumers you are planning to contact can help you determine this.”
ADDED INSIGHTS WITH ANALYTICS
Brink agrees that analytics is essential to having a well-run sales email program with strong close rates. “You have to develop your sales email system for easy use by your operations teams, but you also need the analytics to go along with the operations,” he says. “You need to know what’s working well in your sales and marketing campaigns and what isn’t. You can’t know this without help from the analytics—and you can’t provide relevant coaching to your sales staff if you have no way of knowing how your sales reps are doing. Analytics can shed light on this.”
Because lead generation and tracking of the ensuing sales process is not consistently done well in many organizations, it is difficult to determine where the breakdowns are occurring in email marketing and sales campaigns, especially when the results are below expectations.
“Generally, a 3 percent to 5 percent reply rate to marketing email is good,” Brink says, “but when you track and assess the end-to-end email sales process, you begin to see patterns emerge and to see who is most likely to engage with you for a sale and, ultimately, to be sold. You can also observe and analyze consumer behaviors that tell you how individuals engage with you. Some might click on a link that is included in your email. Others might return multiple times to your website before making a decision.”
Brink adds that LiveHive has an automated sales lead grading process that uses a proprietary algorithm and degradation component that factors in reduced performance expectations for old sales leads.
“New leads are always at the top of the list in terms of likelihood to engage in a sale,” he explains. “But after 30 days, there is usually some type of degradation in the lead because of no activity.”
All of this comes full circle to sales and marketing departments aggressively acting on leads as they come in and moving these leads into sales conversion and close processes in email campaigns.
“The organization has to be willing to invest in training, technology, and coordination of their sales and marketing staffs,” Dickie says. “The common complaint that I hear is that it takes time and money to do all of this, but what is the opportunity cost of doing nothing?”
Mary Shacklett is a freelance writer and president of Transworld Data, a technology analytics, market research, and consulting firm. She can be reached at mshacklett@twdtransworld.com.