Small Business Today Magazine SEP 2014 ELP ENTERPRISES | Page 15

EDITORIALFEATURE

5 Undisputable Reasons to

Overcome Email Resistance
By Craig Klein, SalesNexus.com CEO

S

ending email to sales leads and current customers has proven to be a
great way to drive sales.  However,
because of the “push” nature of the
method, it gets a lot of resistance.  Small
to medium sized business marketers are
afraid of resistance from sales leads and
that can cause them to hesitate about using this powerful method to reach out to
prospective customers.
Let’s look at the facts about email marketing:

Email Delivery Has Changed

You may think of an email campaign fitting
into one of two definitions – either it is a
newsletter sent to people who want to
hear from you – or – it is spam.  WRONG!
That way of thinking is extremely limiting…and misses the benefits of automated email campaigns as a fantastic advertising technology.  Only recently have
marketers figured out how to cross the
chasm between those two definitions and
it is directly linked to the technologies currently available. 
An online CRM can be fully integrated
with email campaign delivery.  With this
marketing automation, it is possible to put
the sales lead and the current customer in
the center of a business marketing strategy.  Emails based on consumer behavior are
welcomed and nurture the sales lead until
they are ready to purchase.

You may think of an email
campaign fitting into one
of two definitions – either
it is a newsletter sent to
people who want to hear
from you – or – it is spam. 
WRONG!
The daily time spent on email has actually
increased in the last three years. 
Survey respondents were asked about
their frequency of digital activities.  In the
category of “at least once per day”, fully
97% check their email daily.  Other popular digital activities trailed this frequency
with 83% using Text/SMS and 76% logging
into Facebook daily.  It pays to get your
message where people are logging in most
frequently.

Email Automation Duplicates Success

The old “set it and forget it” promise is not
quite accurate in today’s world.  Sure, you
can craft your email content and plug it
into your CRM software and it will deliver
the emails automatically.  It can all happen
without any further effort.  Many email
delivery companies were designed to do
just that.

What is different when email is integrated with CRM software is the ability
to quickly and easily see what is working
Consumers Have Changed
in your email campaigns.  When the email
You might think that the move to more and automation is fully integrated with your
more social media outlets would dilute the online CRM, reports will give you an alert
power of email as a good marketing solu- when emails are opened and content is
tion.  A recent survey conducted by eMar- downloaded.  Set up measurement metketer.com shows the opposite conclusion.  rics and the data allows you to see exactly

what is working.  Use this information to
drive increased sales and tweak each of
your email campaigns to fit what the sales
lead wants to read.

Content is Not Always Written

Many would-be email marketers put off
creating content.  Taking time to sit down
and craft written documents that appeal
to customers is hard.  Developing thoughts
and ideas and then bringing them into a
cohesive message for an email campaign
can be daunting.
The good news is you can create content in many other ways.  It would take
another article to completely cover all the
methods for creating content.  So for now,
just focus on these two:
1. Sit down in front of a camera and tell
your sales leads a little about what you
know about them.  Let them recognize
that you feel their pain and want to offer them a viable solution.  Be sure to
make the video about them and not
your company.
2.    Ethically steal from others.  If you give
attribution to the original author/creator, people will be happy you spread
their content to your email list of
prospects.  Not only does it give you
a quick way to touch your customer, it
also validates you as a source of information.

Customers Demand More

Marketing automation is your feedback loop
to respond to sales leads and customers. 
After all, the people who make decisions to
buy your product and service insist on being
in total control of the buying process. 

»Continued on Page 42
[ SEPTEMBER 2014 ] www.SBTMagazine.net 13