How was your Valentine’s Day?
Dinner and a movie? Conversation by candle light?
Since I’m on a roll comparing marketing to dating, let’s have a conversation about conversations – specifically marketing messages, and even more specifically, email marketing.
Last week, I shared the story of how a gallon of sweet tea changed the course of a relationship.
In business parlance, let’s call that “using a lead magnet to generate a new lead.” In dating, it would be offering a girl a drink and asking for her phone number.
Hey, whatever works…
The encounter created an atmosphere of credibility and trust that gave me permission to contact Lisa again, as long as the conversation was appropriate to the status of our relationship – friends.
When you engage in lead generation, you are asking permission to send relevant marketing messages to your new contact in hopes they’ll think of you first when the time comes to buy.
Here is the key: you cannot rush into a “buy now” proposition. There needs to be a gradual warm-up period before consummating the deal.
Just as Seth Godin suggests, your lead nurture process should be full of personal, relevant messages – ones that are anticipated, because the recipient knowingly opted to get them.
There are many useful CRM tools and Email Service Providers (ESP) you may use to manage your email marketing. Be Media Savvy is fluent in a handful of them, with Infusionsoft being our most powerful tool.
Consider these features when comparing ESPs:
- Marketing automation – Will the system let you easily build a sequence of email responses that are triggered by an event? (opt-in, purchase, birthday/anniversary)
- List segmentation – How do you manage contacts who could fall into multiple silos? I prefer tags over lists, sub-lists, list segments, groups, etc.
- Integration APIs – You may find several ways to capture leads on-line and off-line. How does your ESP integrate with your web site, Facebook page, landing page and SMS/text marketing to collect data?
- Lead scoring – How do you know when it’s time to transition from “the friend zone” into a sales conversation? A good CRM system rates your prospects by how engaged they are with your current marketing campaigns. The warmer the lead, the closer they are to buying from you.
Tools and technology are one thing. Your message is still of utmost importance.
“The play’s the thing…” ~ Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 2, Sc. 2
Let’s get back to “personal and relevant” in the dating game. Imagine, after giving Lisa the gallon of tea, my follow up call was all about me. Totally inappropriate. She needed tea because her husband was having brain surgery, and she wasn’t sure he’d survive for a day, a week, a year. And if he died on the operating table, how would she raise her two sons?
Do you think she cared about my agenda that day?
Your new contacts don’t care about your sales benefits and features, your unique selling proposition…and especially about your hottest promotion, yet. To them, that will be useless junk.
They do care about their own problems, and they genuinely want to know if you have the solution that has eluded them.
So, when you talk to your prospects, talk to them about them. That’s the topic that interests them most!
Invite them to respond and give their opinions. And, by all means, listen. They’ll tell you how to sell to them when the time comes, because they’ll reveal exactly what they’re seeking.
So, what keeps your email campaign from being junk? The 3 P’s.
- Permission-based. Your recipient has actively and knowingly chosen to be on your mailing list. None of these “assumed” opt-ins, just because they gave you a business card or connected with you on LinkedIn. If you’re collecting contact information as raffle entries, be very clear with your intent to add people to your list. It’s best if you give them a checkbox and let them tell you if they want to receive more marketing emails.
- Pertinent. Always use list segmenting or tagging to track your contacts. This way, your messages will stay on target and be relevant to the recipient’s interest. All it takes is a few poorly-targeted emails for them to decide to unsubscribe, because you didn’t turn out to be a good fit after all.
- Personalized. Whenever appropriate, use merge tags to insert personalization into your copy. I wouldn’t go overboard with it. Because that might make your readers feel a little creeped out. I also use other merge tags for days of the week or certain appointment dates to personalize what would otherwise be a vanilla form letter.
What about being a pest and causing people to unsubscribe?
I believe you’re only a pest when your message is targeted incorrectly or your tone is misaligned with your prospect. Otherwise, as long as your content is valuable and pertinent, they’ll look forward to your next email.
As far as people unsubscribing; don’t let that stop you. If people do unsubscribe, that’s their prerogative. You may not be the perfect fit for them. Accept it and move on to the people who do wish to work with you. But, when you fail to use your email marketing system to reach your prospects, you have essentially unsubscribed them already.
The end result is the same: they don’t hear from you, and they don’t remember you when buying time comes.
Your comments are welcome. Let’s talk about you. I’m listening.
