Many companies in the marketing field spend a lot of time and money in generating leads that create sales, but in most cases their efforts do not result in the outcomes they desire. Why? The answer lies in the fact that not all leads are sales ready. It has been estimated that only 25% of new leads are sales ready, 25% are straight away disqualified and the remaining 50% require constant nurturing. This is where an effective email marketing strategy can help marketers seek out fresh leads based on their target audience criteria and gradually nurture these leads till they become sales ready.
Many companies in the marketing field spend a lot of time and money in generating leads that create sales, but in most cases their efforts do not result in the outcomes they desire. Why? The answer lies in the fact that not all leads are sales ready. It has been estimated that only 25% of new leads are sales ready, 25% are straight away disqualified and the remaining 50% require constant nurturing. This is where an effective email marketing strategy can help marketers seek out fresh leads based on their target audience criteria and gradually nurture these leads till they become sales ready.
Marketers can use email communication to send out direct promotional material to obtain new customers or influence already existing customers for repeat business or to promote online customer loyalty programs to enhance customer relationships, and much more.
When companies want to reduce their costs of finding and keeping customers, they often turn to the benefits afforded by using an email marketing campaign. Email marketing allows businesses to deliver a compact, precise and well defined message to both existing and potential customers. While the practice is readily endorsed by many businesses, the question becomes whether email marketing only works for the general consumer, or whether it has a place in business to business sales? Well, there's ample evidence to support that it not only works for business to business sales, but that it should be the preferred marketing method of every business. We'll look at what constitutes email marketing, and then provide quantifiable benefits when it comes to business to business sales and marketing initiatives.
So, what are the benefits of an aggressive email marketing campaign for businesses?
1. Email marketing focuses on key decision makers - Email marketing is an excellent tool for identifying and selling to key decision makers within a given account. Email marketing allows companies to provide their own newsletters about market and industry trends and concerns. Decision makers within given accounts have concerns that go beyond just the price of a product or service. Most often they are concerned with their company's entire cost structure and the direction of the market itself. What interests these individuals most are the big picture issues. Email marketing can deliver information on those issues that concern them most.
2. Email marketing is inexpensive - Marketing success depends upon a company's ability to locate and find customers in a cost efficient manner. Reducing the time and costs of finding customers is another benefit of email marketing campaigns. Aside from managing the email contact list, there really aren't a lot of costs associated with email marketing. Because of this, it has an extremely high marketing ROI (Return on Investment).
3. Email marketing shortens sales times - Shortening business to business sales cycle times is another benefit of email marketing. Closing sales sooner means the company has a higher inventory turnover rate, invoices sooner and gets paid faster. It's also essential in increasing market share and incentivizing customer loyalty. Email marketing is an excellent way to provide discounts and helps to incentivize customers to continue to purchase. Many businesses use their email marketing campaigns in conjunction with their customer reward programs.
4. Email marketing helps cross-selling of similar products and services - When companies want to introduce new products and services, and want to stay one step ahead of their competition, they use email marketing to cross-sell similar products and services. This is a great way to get new products off the ground running and is considered by many companies as the preeminent way to introduce new products in a given market.
5. Email marketing lowers the costs of keeping customers - With some estimates that it costs a company up to four times more to find new customers than to sell to an existing one, there's something to be said for the importance of customer retention. This is made possible with email marketing as it incentivizes existing customers to remain loyal by providing them with discounts and rebates.
Email marketing is an excellent tool for business to business marketing and sales efforts. It helps businesses deliver a concise message to market and provide time sensitive information on a company's products or services. Including a company, market or industry newsletter is a plus. Given the low cost of managing email marketing campaigns, and their high level of ROI, they should be adopted by every business, regardless of the market.
Comments