Many business professionals question the wisdom of using email marketing campaigns in business-to-business (B2B) sales. While it is a mainstay of business-to-consumer markets, it doesn't always apply to business markets. So, what are the benefits of email marketing campaigns and is there evidence to support them working in B2B marketing and sales?
The Effectiveness of Email Marketing
Essential to understanding email marketing, is to first understand that there is a drastic difference between “Spam” and email marketing. Spam is simply shooting out as many emails to as many people as possible. It lacks focus, is irritating and is immediately either erased or filtered directly into trash.
However, email marketing is far more direct, focuses on a specific niche and market, delivers a compact message to potential customers and isolates a given demographic. Email marketing’s purpose is to focus only on the most interested parties. It isolates those potential customers and has a successful sales conversion rate.
- Email is Focused: Being able to deliver a message directly to interested customers is a huge benefit. Email marketing allows companies to provide company newsletters, industry and product updates, and generally keeps customers in the know.
- Email Marketing Shortens Sales Time: Shortening sales cycles is a huge advantage. Ship sooner, invoice quicker and get paid faster. Hard to ignore those benefits!
- Email Marketing Lowers Marketing ROI Every business knows that finding and keeping customers is a huge expense. Email marketing not only helps to find customers, but helps keep them loyal and reduces those expenses.
- Email Marketing Allows for Up-selling of Similar Products: Every company knows that to increase sales and market share, they must introduce new products faster. Getting those products off the ground running is another benefit of email marketing as it focuses those sales on existing customers.
One way to define your company's value assertion in marketing is by performing a value-chain analysis.
Do These Benefits Lend Themselves Well to B2B Marketing & Sales?
While I won’t deny any of the above mentioned benefits, I am still not certain these qualities lend themselves well when it comes to business to business sales. Admittedly, my experience is biased. I’ve done the day to day sales, as well as the large contract negotiations. To me, there are a couple of issues with email marketing that perhaps don’t lend themselves well to B2B marketing and sales.
- Email Marketing is Easily Ignored: Despite the fact that email marketing is better than spam, it’s still easily ignored. I get them all the time. Only on the rare occasion do I even both to open one up and I almost never bother to read them.
- Email Marketing is a Crutch: Companies tend to rely upon email far too often. There’s one rule to email. It’s the worst form of communication. It’s easy to become confused or read the email incorrectly.
- Email Marketing Provides Pricing Data: While not all email marketing is guilty of this offense, many are. Don’t make the mistake of putting pricing on your email marketing campaigns. Discuss pricing in person or over the phone. Disclosing pricing discounts to encourage customers to purchase through email marketing can backfire. Instead, declare the savings in a percentage and not in terms of a dollar value.
In terms of my own experience, email marketing is somewhat unproven. However, there are plenty of businesses that swear by it. For some, it provides an easy way to immediately identify potential customers and helps reduce the costs of finding new customers. After all, the only expense in this case is managing the email list. While I can see the benefits, I am equally aware of the drawbacks.
Perhaps for some forms of business sales, such as lower rung sales or inside sales, there is a benefit to email marketing. If you would like to read about the best uses for email marketing in business to business sales, please read the following post Small Business Marketing Solutions: Best Use of Email Marketing
Comments