Email: The Key to Connecting Your Sales and Marketing

Email marketing is a crucial part of the sales process. It adds a vital touchpoint to share critical information, build trust, and nurture leads. Studies have shown that businesses integrating email marketing with sales efforts can see significant improvements in conversion rates – a key metric in measuring a campaign’s effectiveness.

A good salesperson understands their client’s needs. When you get on the phone with a prospect, you are familiar with them and their business – paving the way for productive conversations. By integrating email marketing into your sales efforts, you build stronger relationships with prospects and achieve greater results. Read on and learn more about how email marketing can effectively support your sales efforts and help you close more deals.

Why Pair Email Marketing with Sales?

Email and sales efforts are a powerful combination when working in unity. When paired, they enhance conversion rates, build stronger relationships with prospects, and close more deals.

• Increased Conversion Rates: Studies show that combining email marketing with direct sales efforts can significantly boost conversion rates. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.
• Multiple Touchpoints: Emails provide additional touchpoints for engaging with prospects, increasing the likelihood of positive responses when your sales team contacts them.
• Improved Revenue: Businesses that struggle with aligning their sales and marketing efforts often find themselves missing out on up to 10% of potential revenue.

How to Effectively Align Email Marketing and Sales

Simply sending emails as a sales tool won’t align your marketing efforts – they’re just tools after all. It is critical to implement a cohesive email marketing strategy to take full advantage of the integration with your sales efforts.

Lead Nurture Automation

Quickly following up with leads and prospects is essential to maintaining interest and keeping them engaged. Ensure your website forms (contact forms, content download forms, quote forms, etc.) connect to a nurture automation in your marketing automation platform.

Automated lead nurturing guarantees that leads who fill out forms receive timely automated emails. These messages can educate them about your business while they wait for a sales team member to reach out to provide them with the following:

• Immediate Engagement: Automations ensure that leads are immediately engaged and receive relevant content that keeps them interested.
• Relevant Content: Share targeted, valuable information about your products and services, case studies, testimonials, and industry insights to help build trust and credibility with prospects.

Form Submission Notification

Your sales team can’t always predict when a lead comes through. Setting up email notifications to alert your sales team when a website form is submitted helps them promptly follow up with the people who may give your business money.

Be sure the notifications include relevant information like the lead's name, email, phone number, and the form they submitted. These details will help with timely follow-up and will make the lead feel valued.

• Prompt Response: A quick response can significantly increase the chance of converting a lead into a customer. Businesses that respond to leads within 5 minutes are 100 times more likely to convert opportunities than those that wait 30 minutes.

Sales Nurture Automation

Like a plant needs light and water to grow, your leads need to be nurtured once they submit a form. After your sales team has contacted and scheduled a time to connect, enter the prospect into a sales nurture automation to educate the prospect on your sales process, company, and what to expect during the first call and subsequent interactions.

• Pre-Call Preparation: Send emails explaining what to expect on the first call, introduce key team members, and provide relevant resources (like a pitch deck).
• Post-Call Follow-Up: After the first call, send follow-up emails with more specific content, next steps, and additional information to keep the prospect engaged and informed throughout the process.
• Consistent Communication: Maintain regular communication to build rapport and address any questions or concerns the prospect may have.

Not every lead will be responsive and schedule a meeting with you. Rather than having your sales team manually follow up with unresponsive leads, enter them into a follow-up automation designed for unresponsive leads.

This process frees up time to deal with ready and willing prospects while actively following up with the unresponsive leads through automation. Automating follow-up emails not only saves your sales team time, but also ensures that no lead is overlooked – increasing the chance of eventual engagement.

Prospect Feedback

You can only improve your processes with productive feedback. Email is an excellent tool for receiving feedback on your sales process and what you can do to create a better customer experience. While not every lead converts, you can still learn from these experiences, empowering you to make informed decisions for future interactions.

• Lost Lead Feedback: Send an email asking for lost leads to provide feedback on why they made the decision to move forward with another option. This valuable feedback can help you optimize your sales process and increase future conversions, turning setbacks into learning opportunities.
• Process Improvement: Use the feedback to identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to your sales strategy.

Metrics and Content Effectiveness

Feedback and metrics help improve your sales process and the effectiveness of your content strategy. Close coordination between the sales and marketing teams allows both to fine tune their process and use shared data and goals to help support larger company initiatives.

• Engagement Metrics: While click and open rates provide valuable insights, understanding the content that prospects engage with is even more insightful. If a lead frequently mentions a particular case study or blog, it indicates high relevance.
• Content Customization: Feedback helps the marketing team refine their content strategy to address your prospect’s pain points and interests. This allows you to create and promote more effective campaigns and content.

Empower Your Sales Efforts with Email Marketing

Email marketing is an essential tool that amplifies your sales efforts by providing additional touchpoints, nurturing leads, and building trust. Integrating email with your sales process can enhance prospect communication, improve conversion rates, and ultimately drive more sales.

Ready to align your sales and marketing efforts? Aztek partners with organizations to elevate their digital marketing strategy to achieve greater success. Reach out today to talk to our team about how we can support your marketing efforts.