ICON14: Tips For Personalizing Emails, Nurturing Leads

Garns noted that most companies have three to five hurdles to overcome with customers. “That’s not a huge amount of emails.” He used the example of a lawn care service. If one of the frequent objections is that the service is too expensive, the message might be the three most costly lawn care mistakes that you can make when doing it on your own.

Emails don’t necessarily need to sell your services, Garns told the audience, but they should position your company as experts. “They need to move you from vendor to expert. You need to help prospects realize that they need your service to get from where they are to where they want to be. When you position yourself as an expert, not a vendor, you’re in a much better position to sell.”

Email communication also needs to be focused, particularly the call-to-action, Garns added. “Don’t have three or four separate calls-to-action in an email,” he said. “While you might want to tell your customers about everything you have to offer, it’s a huge mistake. With too many different calls-to-action, they don’t know what the offer is and they get distracted.”

From a design perspective, marketers should change things up from HTML to text every once in a while to provide a more personalized feel, Garns advised.

“If I get an email that looks as if it is coming from an individual — not a company — who took the time to look up my customer records and make a comment specific to what I have expressed an interest in, I’m more likely to open it.”

But that doesn’t mean that marketers need to write hundreds of individual emails, Garns noted. “Automation alone is not going to grow your business,” but it will help you deliver more targeted and personalized communication that will build sales.

Avoiding The “Black Hole”

Printer Bees, which provides marketing and promotional services to real estate offices and other small businesses, needed a better strategy for following up with customers.

“Prospects and clients were going into a black hole,” said Founder Nadine Larder during a session at ICON14. “Repeat business was dismal based on lack of follow-up.”

Following the company’s implementation of Infusionsoft, “we’ve added 11,834 qualified leads in the past three years and we don’t need additional head count to manage those leads,” Larder said.

Larder explained that people want to be “spoon-fed” information, so look for opportunities to connect with prospects and clients, such as changes in regulations in their respective industries. “Good content is anything that the perfect customer will pay for with an email address.”

Other indicators of hot leads include: They’ve downloaded a coupon, ordered a print sample, subscribed to a newsletter or magazine, or they are a real estate agent targeting expired listings. “Then we switch on the lead machine,” Larder said. “But they are warm leads vs. cold calls. It is following up vs. invading their inbox.”

Printer Bees even sends emails to customers who have downloaded coupons that are about to expire, Larder noted. “It highlights our brilliant customer service”

ICON14: Tips For Personalizing Emails, Nurturing Leads

Many B2B marketers struggle to determine how many emails they should be sending. But with Forrester Research estimating that 838 billion marketing messages were sent in 2013, businesses also are tasked to send relevant, timely and compelling emails to stand out.

“You want to take a look at how many objections you have — whether it is price, complexity of the services, or whatever it is — and as many objections as you have, you should have the same number of emails to address those concerns,” Tyler Garns, Founder of Box Out Marketing and former VP of Marketing for Infusionsoft, told an audience at ICON14.

Garns noted that most companies have three to five hurdles to overcome with customers. “That’s not a huge amount of emails.” He used the example of a lawn care service. If one of the frequent objections is that the service is too expensive, the message might be the three most costly lawn care mistakes that you can make when doing it on your own.

Emails don’t necessarily need to sell your services, Garns told the audience, but they should position your company as experts. “They need to move you from vendor to expert. You need to help prospects realize that they need your service to get from where they are to where they want to be. When you position yourself as an expert, not a vendor, you’re in a much better position to sell.”

Email communication also needs to be focused, particularly the call-to-action, Garns added. “Don’t have three or four separate calls-to-action in an email,” he said. “While you might want to tell your customers about everything you have to offer, it’s a huge mistake. With too many different calls-to-action, they don’t know what the offer is and they get distracted.”

From a design perspective, marketers should change things up from HTML to text every once in a while to provide a more personalized feel, Garns advised.

“If I get an email that looks as if it is coming from an individual — not a company — who took the time to look up my customer records and make a comment specific to what I have expressed an interest in, I’m more likely to open it.”

But that doesn’t mean that marketers need to write hundreds of individual emails, Garns noted. “Automation alone is not going to grow your business,” but it will help you deliver more targeted and personalized communication that will build sales.

Avoiding The “Black Hole”

Printer Bees, which provides marketing and promotional services to real estate offices and other small businesses, needed a better strategy for following up with customers.

“Prospects and clients were going into a black hole,” said Founder Nadine Larder during a session at ICON14. “Repeat business was dismal based on lack of follow-up.”

Following the company’s implementation of Infusionsoft, “we’ve added 11,834 qualified leads in the past three years and we don’t need additional head count to manage those leads,” Larder said.

Larder explained that people want to be “spoon-fed” information, so look for opportunities to connect with prospects and clients, such as changes in regulations in their respective industries. “Good content is anything that the perfect customer will pay for with an email address.”

Other indicators of hot leads include: They’ve downloaded a coupon, ordered a print sample, subscribed to a newsletter or magazine, or they are a real estate agent targeting expired listings. “Then we switch on the lead machine,” Larder said. “But they are warm leads vs. cold calls. It is following up vs. invading their inbox.”

Printer Bees even sends emails to customers who have downloaded coupons that are about to expire, Larder noted. “It highlights our brilliant customer service”