Many times, we see people investing a lot of their marketing budget into lead generation, and this is vital to growing a business. As a matter of fact, this week, we wrote a post about lead generation and how you can scale up your business quickly by accelerating your lead volume.
The other side of the equation, however, which is quite often neglected, is conversion. As an Internet marketing company, we break conversion down into two key areas. The first area is Website conversion. The second area is email conversion.
In this post, we’re going to focus on email conversion because there is so much you can achieve through the proper implementation of an automated email campaign. Do you currently generate leads through advertising and direct response marketing, then provide your leads directly to a sales person? If so, you may be leaving money on the table and running an inefficient campaign.
The reason why this is the case is because many of your leads are not ready to make a purchase decision and speak to a sales person. They simply may be at the attention or information gathering step in the decision making process. So, what’s the solution? The solution is to develop an automated email campaign that establishes a relationship with prospects and creates value. Then it’s a matter of getting the prospect to some type of sales letter that provides a good mix of value and a strong sales message.
Depending on your budget, there are some basic tools that you can use if you want to manually send out your emails, including Constant Contact and Strong Mail. If you are looking for an automated email system, there are systems such as Infusion, but keep in mind that Infusion can be challenging to set up, so you may need some support. If you have a larger company, you may want to consider a more advanced email automation system such as Marketo. With Marketo, not only can you set up an automated email campaign, but it integrates with the SalesForce CRM system, webinar services such as GoToMeeting and WebEx, and it even scores your leads.
If you have any questions about email automation, please comment.