Did you know…
McKinsey & Co reported that email list marketing has 40x more effectiveness than social media such as Facebook and Twitter for reaching your target market.
This can also translate as you requiring 40x more effort, time, thinking and resources in social media to translate into sales orders as you could through email… which you already know how to do very well!
So if you’re interested in more revenue and keeping more paying customers warm, who would learning from benefit you more: a social media expert, or a sales email expert?
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Making Use of Your Email lists
Your customers in your pipeline, or existing accounts in your list may be contacted and provided with the right messages at least once every two weeks and your results will be much more effective. (Depending on laws at the time you send an email, and what your company legal expert says to you – you’re here on this blog to be the sales email copywriting expert.)
This means, if you my friend, the sales person whose job is to keep customers happy, more engaged, and preparing customers towards upselling, then you have a more powerful tool than most social marketing people out there, you should theoretically be a more valuable asset to your sales team revenue wise, than any B2B social media or SEO expert. (Always do your own research, such as ask some social media people how many businesses the B2B expert got a purchase order from directly from a post without any contact from sales people?)
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Understanding Social Media and SEO
I’ll explain. As someone who studied at Masters Degree level marketing communications, including some aspects of neuroscience and advertising agency tests which aren’t covered in depth at the highest level of CIM… here’s a secret I can pass to you, to help you engage your customers further.
Social media is optimised to attract people who are easy to catch the attention of, so it’s a simple message at the basic level of that looks nice or is cool and so on… basically shareable socially. Sharing nice stuff tells friends you are higher ranking now in the social ranking ladder and boosts your ego. Nice stuff leads to more people following you. So you as a company they get more reach, and the potential customer gets an ego hit.
Social media in this way, is designed to attract people by being attractive, in the hope more people share and get attracted. The downside is, as an example, a million people may click like on ‘survival weekend in a jungle post’, or a ‘space travel ride’ post as these can be really cool posts, but out of this million, how many are sending in a purchase order?
SEO attracts people to click through to a website in the main, so this is stage one, in what could be a 50 touch point process before a purchase order.
The final buyer decision makers will usually have a different reason to purchase than at the social media and SEO stage… see further down to learn why.
(However, the great thing about social media and SEO, is that you can capture people genuinely looking for your company’s type of product and service. So it’s a great resource for learning and introducing to company researchers who are ‘placing ideas into their ideas basket’ for further research. – I like a balanced view where I can find one)
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… And the Sales team
Sales people at the stages of negotiation, going back-and-forth, to closing and purchase order stage have to deal with questions such as: “What happens if I need to do this in future?,” as an example.
These are typically by phone, in-person and by email. (Again highlighting why most important communications and nitty gritty stuff is by email, and directors always check email above all other forms of communications. (But remember this – Some directors are introverts when they want thinking time and will avoid human contact, but don’t mind reading emails and writing back during this quiet time period.))
A sales person knows all the words, phrases, questions to answer at the final stages to get the deal done. If you you glance over your company website and literature, what you read from the introductory copy written for the customer will be different from later in the sales process, from the initial landing pages of your company website vs final emails closing orders. That’s the disconnect from social media & SEO vs sales emails.
Email is Forty Times More Powerful Than Social Media
That’s why, mastering some of the tips on this blog will give you as a sales person email ideas to enjoy a higher revenue rate over the long run. (Remember, it takes time to fine-tune your educational email campaigns.)
And that’s why emails have a higher conversion and revenue rate than social media, and why mastering writing sales emails over time will outperform any SEO in terms of revenue. Make no mistake, SEO experts are important, as you need to know what prospects are looking for at the top of the pipeline, but it’s at the business end when the customer says yes or no, where sales emails will help the conversion the most.
Emails have to be more precise and more persuasive to suit buyers.
SEO and social media itself in many industries can have huge reach, and get a thousands of click-throughs, but have minimal effect on revenue.
Good sales emails can affect customers wanting a conversion and revenue. If you have experts who do this, like you, dear reader, by enhancing this skill to your speaking skills, then over time, you can use sales emails to take much more customers through the pipeline.
If a company has an account manager team that have brilliant sales emails, it has to be a good thing in comparison to competitor that sends basic emails asking for a convenient time to catch up or have a chat. Any director or business owner will tell you, you don’t want to be spending time on 10 phone calls a day with people who want to have a chat with you – how can you run a business or large teams doing this?
So the competitor team will fail, if they send emails of this nature, or get a response a long time later after they have dealt with their perceived priority list. A chat or catch up is not a priority for any director running a P&L, or who wants to improve cash flow.
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Customer Success
If you can’t communicate and engage your customer, than you don’t understand your customer. The best customer success teams quickly find and resolve new problems. They understand the customer. Customer success emails are really important, so don’t be afraid to engage. Investors will tell you ownership is 9/10ths of the law.
A customer paid to vote for you. You own that bad boy now.
Send them some interesting emails so they find you insightful, enjoyable, and up-to-date. More importantly, give them the confidence to feel closer to you and confide in you. Qualitative Research is very valuable as the business landscape constantly changes.
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The Science in this blog
One last thing before the science: In terms of knowledge on which social media or email product to use, I couldn’t tell you. and if you’re pretty technical it won’t take long to see some reviews and work out which software platforms are best, so if you were wondering, that’s what I’d do.
However, although I’m not an expert on say how to use Slack for instance, I’m not convinced if you was a Jedi master in this you will undoubtedly improve sales revenue, especially after reading the report by McKinsey & Co. Again, using social media software takes no time to learn for most people, and won’t make you stand out in terms of moving customers to the finishing post.
If you spend more time on working out how to construct good sales emails to suit your audience, you will in fact be a much bigger contributor to revenue.
OK, the science bit you’ve been waiting for:
You can’t change a desire, only channel a desire. Let me repeat that: You can’t change a desire, only channel a desire.
One famous person in the advertising industry gave a hint to a formula about a luxury car, when the car manufacturer had a luxury car but it made a loud engine sound when stationary at the traffic lights. He changed that to say on the lines of enjoy the thrilling power of the horse power as the engine rumbles while the car is stationary and feel the power at your disposal as you hold the steering wheel. This changed a negative to a positive, in fact a differentiator that forced other car manufacturers to want their cars to rumble too so that prestige buyers could literally “feel” the power they have in their hands over the car driver in the lane next door.
Stay with me in the next next session. It’s alternative information to the CIM (Chartered institute of Marketing), but it will help all my sales and account manager friends with tested practical methods that work that you can try out.
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Sales Email Tips 