The From Line
Sending, Managing & Monetizing Email
How long is your sales cycle? 1 month? 3 months? 6 months? Longer? It is not the length of your sales cycle that matters. It is more about the quality of your follow-ups during that time period.
According to MarketingSherpa, 73% of leads in B2B markets are not ready for the sales pitch. Therefore, it is considered a good lead management practice to allow your leads to go through a lead nurturing process. By doing this, you will be ahead of most businesses, since up to 65% of them do not make use of lead nurturing campaigns.
Here are a few ways to improve your lead management campaigns.
Objectives of lead nurturing
• Build the relationship with your prospects.
• Provide valuable content through email automation.
• Be viewed as the expert in your industry.
Prioritize your leads by nurturing fresh leads first
Provide your leads with emails pertaining to their initial contact with you. For example, if they downloaded a free report pertaining to your industry, personalize emails with conversations in this topic.
From lead nurturing to sales
Once your lead has demonstrated interest in your company as the solution provider, it is then appropriate to stop lead nurturing and move them through to your sales process. An example would be if they attended a demonstration of your product or service. This is the most optimal time to show them how your business can help.
If after lead nurturing and no sales…
It is vital to keep in touch with your prospects, even if they decide not to buy during your average sales cycle. You may still be able to convert those older leads into sales in the future. Don’t give up on a contact just because they did not fit the generic sales cycle mold. Calculated future communication can revive the prospect and launch them back into the working sales cycle.
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Online marketing authorities Murray Newlands and John Rampton recently teamed up on “Performance Marketing for Professionals,” a brand new eBook that focuses on how to get started and become successful in this rapidly evolving industry. “Performance Marketing for Professionals“ details topics ranging from affiliate marketing, to media buying, to SEO, offering hands-on industry experience and expert insights from Newlands and Rampton, plus a handful of other Internet marketing leaders.
Throughout it’s 14 chapters, “Performance Marketing for Professionals” offers great advice on becoming an affiliate, crafting successful email campaigns, and designing landing pages, making it a great resource for novice Internet marketers. However, this book is not just a newbie’s guide, as it also offers in-depth coverage of and expert tips on Facebook ad buying, Google and Bing PPC campaigns, and competitive intelligence. So, whether you are just starting out and are looking for a textbook to help get you started, or you an experienced digital marketer who is looking for some new ideas, “Performance Marketing for Professionals” is a great place to find all the information you need.
As we read through the book, one of our favorite chapters had to be the one focused on email marketing. It’s a comprehensive chapter on the subject that not only walks you through the steps of what a great email campaign needs, but it also offers some great insights into design and other factors that sometimes get overlooked.
“When people ask about making money with Email marketing, I have one simple answer, which is, send people what they want to receive,” the book explains. “You should know where they opted in and what they opted in for, so be sure to send them related things that they will like, click on, and sign up to use or purchase. If someone registers for a competition to win a vacation on your site, then send them more information about other people’s competitions to win a vacation. If they registered for a loan application, send them more finance related offers. If you blindly send irrelevant offers then there’s no value in your Emails. If you send good quality content in the form of a deal or a newsletter, customers may even send it on and help grow your list.“
From there the chapter delves into topics such as list development, co-registration, subject lines, deliverability, design, and more.
For all of this and much more, be sure to pick up Murray and John’s new book “Performance Marketing for Professionals” from their website—after all, where else can you get so much information for only $4?
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Urban consumers feel 13% stronger than suburban ones that making a purchase DOES NOT constitute permission to market to them on their mobile device. Likewise, Urban consumers also feel 25% more strongly than suburban ones that making a purchase DOES NOT constitute permission to market to them via email.
Lesson: marketers shouldn't mess with city folks texts and email - they'll be a lot less forgiving!
Source: Determining Perceptions of Marketing Permission Impact Marketing Success
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70% of consumers feel very strongly or somewhat strongly that they give their permission before they can be marketed to via email. 17% say no permission is needed. - In other words, stop buying email lists.
Source: Determining Perceptions of Marketing Permission Impact Marketing Success
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Maximizing the value of your content seems like another chore on your sites to do list, but the truth is, content monetization is absolutely critical if you want to increase your conversion rate and generate more leads.
Here are 3 content monetization tips to help your customer acquisition and conversion efforts get started on the right track.
Encourage User Participation
By encouraging users to give their opinion, you improve your monetization efforts in two distinct ways: User participation creates a much better overall experience for visitors browsing your website. Getting the opinions, experiences and perspectives from users will enrich and enhance whatever content you are providing. User participation creates more content for your site, also referred to as user-generated content. The upside to user-generated content is that it's of high quality and practically free.
For each of the key points above to be effective, you need to make sure blog comments are enabled and/or add a forum section to your website, where users can give their two cents and build relationships around the topics they’re passionate about.
Keep the Buying Decision in Mind
Content that talks about specific services, products, brands or merchants almost always monetizes better than content that does not. No matter the topic of your content, odds are there is a shopping decision closely related to it.
For example, a photographer who runs a blog may only post recent photographs and tips for taking better photographs, but does that mean they cannot monetize effectively? No way. Within these posts they have the chance to let the reader know the type of lens and camera they used for each photo, where they can then insert an affiliate link to buy that specific lens or camera.
Not only does this vastly improve your monetization efforts, it also creates a richer experience for the reader. Do not make the mistake of mentioning a helpful product, service, brand, merchant or software without having a way for the reader to find out more right then and there.
Increase Authenticity
In order to monetize effectively you absolutely must find the perfect balance between monetization and authenticity. Your users understand the need for monetization, but driving the nail too deep, so to speak, will only hinder your progress and repel your users.
Find the type of content that produces the most results, that gets the most response, and leads to the most conversions. Nine out of ten times informational content will trump commercial, and in the end will earn you the most revenue.
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