Email is a great tool used by marketing for generating leads and by sales for following up after presentations. Here are 7 tips for improving the effectiveness of both.
Two Tips For Sales
- Send a follow-up email right away. Most companies skip this step. This outreach can be personalized or you can use a template email. Programs like Mailchimp, Aweber, Constant Contact and MyEmma have auto responder functionality that you can use for a post-presentation campaign. You may also want to consider a service like InfusionSoft. With InfusionSoft your sales rep can open his or her phone while traveling, click a button, and the campaign is underway. This on-the-go solution lets them follow up with emails, tasks, sales funnel information, and even call reminders.
- Know when your emails are opened. While InfusionSoft can notify you when emails from campaigns are opened, Sidekick tracks your open rates and links clicked from individual emails you send via Outlook or Gmail. It is a free tool created by Hubspot, a marketing automation software company. This can be used to know the right time to follow up.
Five Tips For Marketing
- Optimize for mobile devices. According to Litmus, almost half of all emails are opened on a mobile device. Making emails easy to read on a phone or tablet is no longer optional. If you don't have the ability to create responsive emails, at least make them mobile-friendly at 600px wide.
- Make it easy to respond. If your emails are part of a campaign, the "reply-to" email should be to a person, not an account like no-reply@companyname.com or sales@companyname.com. As mentioned in a recent Litmus blog post, emails that have the "reply-to" function go to an unmanned account, eliminating opportunities for continued engagement. This appearance of unfriendliness makes you seem unapproachable and can have a negative impact on your open rates.
- Find your own best time to send emails. DJ Waldow, co-author of “The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing” and nationwide speaker on the topic of email marketing, constantly reminds marketers that the best time to send emails depends on your customers. Create a chart of the most frequent times your emails are opened. Adjust your send times as the chart evolves.
Don't have that information available yet? Here is advice from Mailchimp: Send between 10:00 a.m. and noon on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Mailchimp conducted a study of millions of emails and came to the same conclusion as DJ. Find what works best for your customers. They also learned that unrelated to any industry, B2B, B2C, geography, or other kinds of demographic - mid-morning, mid-week emails tend to deliver the best open rates.
- Be likable. Constant Contact highly recommends your emails make you personable and not too self-absorbed. If your readers feel like you are self-serving, the dollars will go walking. This is particularly important in the follow up process. Think through the eyes of your audience, and write emails that resonate with what’s important to them.
- Give options. Home remodelers growing their business fastest present a choice of payment options to every single prospective customer. With EnerBank, that means they are offering a choice of Same-As-Cash and a low monthly payment option like Reduced Interest, Zero Interest, or Traditional Installment Loans for their home improvement projects. Promoting these options in your email will help you generate more leads, close projects faster, and get bigger deals.
Did you know that EnerBank serves only the home improvement industry and is one of the top 10% of all banks nationwide? There are a lot of reasons why roofering contractors and other contractors prefer EnerBank USA as their provider of choice when offering financing.
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