How to increase marketing ROI:

By leading your prospects into action

With today's B2B prospects heavily searching the web for solutions to their business needs, thinking several moves ahead when creating an email campaign to drive web traffic provides a distinct strategic advantage in attracting and acquiring new business. Driving traffic to your site through email campaigns provides several strategic advantages. First, web analytics allow you to analyze responses to your messaging via click through rates. Second, email offers, if designed correctly, pre–qualify prospects by allowing them to opt out if they are not interested in your offer. Third, emails prompt interested customers to contact you before your sales force wastes time chasing dead–ends.

Readers think, readers judge, readers decide

Effective email campaigns prompt readers to think, judge and decide immediately about you and your offer. This fact alone increases return on investment because your sales team will spend the majority of their time following up on qualified and motivated leads. Through the enclosed process, you can drive, anticipate and predict prospects' responses to your offer.

If you know your prospects' pain points in advance, plant questions in your email blasts that lead them to the conclusion that your company can answer their needs. Providing an immediate solution to a qualified prospect is the key to increasing ROI on any marketing campaign.

To drive traffic and provide immediate solutions through an email marketing campaign follow these 6 steps:

Step 1: List the pain points.

Create a list of the pain points your company solves for various prospects.

Step 2: Determine your prospects.

Use psychographic and demographic information related to the pain points your company solves to develop a targeted email list of prospects who struggle with the issues you alleviate.

Step 3: Create relevant messaging.

Segment your email message into three sections. 1 – Begin your email message with a question that gets your target thinking about one of the specific pain points you can solve for them. 2 – Briefly tell them how your company has solved that pain point in the past through a summarized case study. 3 – Lead them to the site for a deeper explanation.

Step 4: Capture and convert prospects to qualified leads at the site.

1 – Provide an offer on the site (product demo, white paper, etc.). 2 – Provide a form that captures contact information from interested parties. 3 – Provide a form box where prospects can tell you how to help them. 4 – Tell them that your sales team will be following up promptly.

Step 5: Provide an immediate solution.

Following up within at least two hours of inquiry with a phone call increases sales closing rates by up to 70%. In phoning, provide the right solution for the right pain point. Be sure that your sales team's message is in sync with your email web messaging. If their message differs from the email or web, the prospect will become confused and delay making a decision.

Step 6: Analyze campaign results and tweak messaging.

Analyze click through rates from open emails to actual leads that were captured. This information can easily be obtained through web marketing partners with solutions designed to track this data. At this point, you can begin to test several different messages by repeating the above steps, but be sure to only change one thing at a time so you can effectively analyze the change.

After several months of analysis and tweaking you can start to launch several different messages in to the market simultaneously directed at different target audiences. This will continue to increase marketing ROI on the entire campaign by more effectively targeting a larger segment of the market.

For more on partners for email campaign tracking and development, web analytics and purchasing targeted lists, feel free to send me a note kreedy@leereedy.com.