Email Marketing to Convert a Lead - The Corporate Sale

In light of this week being the Salesforce.com annual Dreamforce show (VerticalResponse will be there, stop by and say hi!), I thought I'd write a bit to those who might be selling large-ticket products or services in a multi-step fashion.

The first thing you'll need to do is attempt to define what's going to be successful for you. Defining metrics for success of a campaign doesn't have to be daunting and your metric doesn’t necessarily have to be about how much you “profit” from your email, ironically it could be how much you “learn” from your results. 

In general it’s a good idea for you to decide what your definition of success is up front, then compare your results to your metrics after you’ve mailed. Keep this in the forefront of your mind: it’s really about continual measurement and refinement to hit success.

The Corporate Sale

If you are selling your product into a large corporation and you have a longer multi-step sales process, your email marketing metric for success may depend on what lead conversion means to you.  One way to do this is to “back into it” from the total number you need to convert.

If this is the first time you’ve emailed this campaign, your “unknown” is going to be your conversion rate, meaning "what percent of your recipients are going to do what you want them to?" So your best bet might be to test before you roll-out to gauge where your conversion rate might fall. If you know you know you need to drive 500 conversions and your test shows that your conversion rate is 1.25%, then you’re going to have to email to 40,000 addresses to reach your goal.

Finally, you’ll have to assess how much you’ve sold to see if your revenue equaled, made more than, or made less than what you spent on the entire campaign.

Comments

[Kinexus Internet Ltd]

Once again you have outdone yourself. The information that you provide is immensely helpful! There are so many good points which helped me lot to understand the subject.

Thanks!

[Janine]

Great point Adam! Maybe I should have titled this differently. But, you want some more ideas? I'll give it my best, but maybe some others can chime in...

If you know that you have someone who has downloaded something from you or signed up for something, why not follow up with a phone call or email telling them you want their feedback if what they've received is helpful to them?

You can also use direct mail to follow up as well, depending on the total revenue your sale will bring.

Also keep in mind that you might need more than a few touches to your prospect. Make sure that you have a pipeline set up for these prospects to get into. If someone downloads something, they get email "A". If they take the next step, send email "B" and so-on. Your job? Move them along the pipeline to get to your next level.

I've talked to a bunch of people this week about their CRM tool and how best to use it to communicate to their Leads and Contacts. I got a ton of information. Try these sites for more ideas, I'm not sure what it is you're actually selling:

http://www.sellingpower.com/homepage/index.asp

http://www.salesforce.com/customers/

http://success.salesforce.com/

[Adam]

Hello,

The start and title of this article are good. It drew me in as I am in sales, use Vertical response, and do follow a multi-step sales process.

I did find the ending of the article a little disappointing.
Where do I go from here? What other things do I need to keep in mind?

This topic would make a good white paper. Help us better understand the role an email campaign can play in a multi-step corporate sale and help us understand how to convert a lead or what that could look like.

The post above speaks more about testing and determining how large your list needs to be based on your conversion rate. It really has little to do with how to specifically use email to convert a lead.