Changing customer expectations in B2B tech and the constant need for B2B marketers and sales teams to work more closely together in creating and nurturing a prospect pipeline and successfully converting those prospects into long term customers has led to a greater need for marketing and sales to work together on their core email marketing strategy.
With bulk email senders like Google and Yahoo starting to enforce new requirements for bulk email senders; now is more crucial than over for B2B marketing and sales teams who rely on heavy email outbound prospecting tactics to align close on processes, campaigns and goals.
Here are a few base level tips and pointers that can help.
Align on Core Target Accounts and Outreach Lists
If marketing is always going after target accounts that aren’t aligned with sales rep accounts for instance, there will always be a disconnect and longer conversion turn arounds. But if both teams align on target accounts with clearly defined goals that expect marketing to warm up or nurture email conversations with prospects for sales to takeover at some point, it leads to better collaboration, a greater uniformity in the overall marketing and sales messaging, while also optimizing end to end processes.
For larger teams, having divided goals can serve end results better. For instance, marketing uses email outreach capabilities to drive new demand while also focusing on the point above. But this is where both teams need to align on accounts and target lists (to reduce overlaps between new demand being created by sales reps and marketing at the same time) while ensuring the right measurement tactics and put in place to understand what’s working and what’s not in real-time.
Create Unique Measurement Metrics
If recent conversations with experts are anything to go by – now is the time for marketers to create more business value and drive measurable output that leads back to true ROI.
- When it comes to website traffic; it’s not about how much traffic your site garnered but how much of that traffic was relevant.
- When it comes to email marketing; it’s not about how many opens you got, it should be more focused on how many replies were garnered, or meetings could be set up using those bulk sends.
- When it comes to social media: it’s not about how many followers a brand has but how well you can use your social media channels to drive prospect interest and eventually, website traffic and conversions with the right marketing message cycle.
This is where email marketing teams and sales teams can build their own metrics and measurement reports to closely align on how should be more focused on what part of the prospect journey and cycle to create a successful, unified conversion journey. In short, test the right things, measure the same things.
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Email Marketing Send Identities Aligned to Sales Rep Names
Not a lot of B2B tech marketers do this. Your email send name and identity has to be thought of well enough to prevent the email from going into spam while also ensuring your domain stays safe. So most marketing teams use aliases to send bulk emails.
Most email marketing platforms can be set up to have different identities and email send names registered within it to drive email marketing. Using the actual names of sales reps for certain email marketing campaigns can actually have prospects warm up to both, the brand and sales rep name, if done right. Thereby potentially allowing a sales rep to drive a shorter sales cycle.
A Special Offer Aligned to Email Marketing Cadences at the End of Every Sales Meeting
Direct mail serves a host of benefits. When used with deeper alignment between sales and marketing, it can drive prospects through the buying journey more successfully.
To reduce the burden on a sales rep, email marketing teams can actually use direct mails (e-coupons, vouchers and similar such tokens) to thank prospects for meeting with their brand sales reps. When it comes to direct mail, there are a plethora of creative ways to use this channel to effectively push business goals. The untouched secret lies in aligning who gets what direct mail between sales and marketing with a strong emphasis on purpose.
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End Note: Email marketing is here to stay but sales and marketing need to align better for effective results
Modern generative AI tools and sales engagement platforms like Salesloft, Outreach and many others are capable of generating a high volume of email. Using these emails to nurture actual business ROI has to be the prerogative of both, marketing and sales. Email as an effective revenue source is still a largely untapped potential across global organizations. Now is the time to get it right.
