Accelerating Sales with Better Email Marketing Practices

Accelerating Sales with Better Email Marketing Practices

Matt Heinz

President, Heinz Marketing Inc

[email protected]

@heinzmarketing

Housekeeping

• Copy of this deck

• Offers for you– 10 minute brainstorm– Successful Selling– Secrets to Successful Email Marketing– Secrets to Successful Content Marketing

• Email me what you want– It’s that simple…

Last Slide First

1. Understand your customer, product & objective before planning (let alone executing)

2. Use the resources you already have before spending money

3. Review & assess/adjust your priorities, focus areas and execution at least weekly

4. Fire lots of bullets

5. Manage actively and openly

6. Sales & marketing is too important to leave to salespeople and marketers

Prospect Engagement Funnel

Active Sales CycleChannels: CRM, 1:1

Goal: Sell

New Customer

Drip MarketingChannels: Email Newsletters, CRM System

Goal: Drive Active Prospects

Network / Open CommunityChannels: Twitter, Facebook, Blog, LinkedIn

Goal: Drive Registration

Network-exclusive access to contentValue-added special offersDiscovery eventsWhite papers, top ten tips, etc.

Testimonials, Success StoriesProfile-Specific MessagesNew product/service offers

Referral & Tell-a-Friend OffersNetwork / Community Invites

New Opportunity Alerts1:1 with Existing CustomerIn-Market Events

Next Step Accelerator Ideas

Customer Targets (based on persona profiles)

Four steps to a better plan

1. Do the math (quantify what success looks like)

2. Create a clear customer profile

3. Map the sales and buying process

4. Plan to fire lots of bullets

Eight tips for better subject lines

1. Tease

2. Personalize

3. Be specific

4. Prioritize

5. Use numbers

6. Watch your length

7. Your “from” line

8. Test

Reviving dormant subscribers

• Define “engaging”

• Focus on the subject line

• Write to them (not for you)

• Tie it to something they did

• Make a request, make it specific & urgent

• Don’t make it look like a marketing email

The case for marketing automation

1. Do the math

2. Show the math from others

3. Customer retention too

4. Show samples of metrics/reports possible

5. More email (not less)

6. Long-term headcount reduction

7. Impact on inside sales performance

8. Don’t talk about software

Why transactional emails matter

• Open Rates– Commercial Email: 31%– Transactional Email: 47%

• Clickthrough Rates– Commercial Email: 6%– Transactional Email: 20%

• Annual Volume– Commercial Email: 3,694 per year– Transactional Email: 87 per year

• 74% of emails that organizations send are transactional!

What it does for you

What counts as transactional email

• Order confirmations• Shipping notification• Receipts• Order status• Receipt confirmation• Service request received• New account set-up• Account balance information• Expired subscriptions

What we’re doing wrong

• 44% of transactional email has no personalization• 79% of transactional email has no promotional

content• 42% of transactional emails are delivered as text (no

HTML)• 53% of transactional emails are controlled outside of

marketing• Less than 1% of email marketing funds are spent on

transactional email

Nine mistakes most companies make

1.Marketing doesn’t own the email

2.Undercommunication

3.Focusing only on the transaction

4.Not paying attention to timing

5.Making it a one-way street

6.No personality

7.Hard to read

8.Not enough resources

9.Vague subject lines

Count the mistakes

Glazing over

Closer but room for improvement

What to do immediately

1.Pay attention to the “from” name

2.Subject lines are very important

3.Test, test, test, test…

4.Personalization

5.Send email when people are reading

6.Minimize sequencing

7.Prioritize the primary message (but keep it short)

8.Measure!

What to do next

1.Dedicated IP address

2.Design for all devices

3.Time the emails correctly

4.Use HTML

5.Match look/feel to rest of brand, Web site, etc.

6.What else might they need? What did they forget?

Several best practices in one email

And right before my flight…

Renewal notices

Primary message prominent

…but at the bottom…

Some good, some bad

Two minutes later

Don’t forget…

[email protected]

Questions?