Everyone with an email inbox knows why open and click rates have been declining.

People are overwhelmed with emails!

And most of them are irrelevant.

In this episode, we talk about how targeting and personalization can turn people on rather than off!

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Since our mission is to help aviation companies sell more products and services, and most of our clients are business to business or B2B, we look at tools like email marketing that they’re using a LOT.

Most of us are getting a LOT more email than a year ago, or certainly more than five years ago!

And most of that email marketing gets to us through a marketing automation tool of some kind, such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, Infusionsoft or SharpSpring.

So, today, we’re going to talk about three things you should be doing with b2b email marketing –

  • Keep track of email
  • Deliver marketing materials
  • Make good decisions

Of course, the goal of all this marketing automation and email marketing is a full pipeline and increased sales.

A full pipeline is the key to happiness and success, at least for us sales and marketing professionals.

A full pipeline gives us the freedom to refuse any particular project or client for any reason, and gives us the prosperity to treat their clients, team and family very, very well.  All in all, it means that we have choices.

So, how can aviation companies use b2b email marketing to fill our marketing pipeline and make more sales?

Keep Track of People

One of the reasons that email is so successful is because the cost is so low.

It doesn’t cost much more to send 50,000 emails than it does to send 500.

So, people tend to overkill and send every email they can think of to everyone on their list.

It’s not a bad idea to have a general interest newsletter that you send to your entire list on a fairly regular basis.

But even so, most aviation companies have different products or services, and different lines of business.  Some of our customers are interested in some of our products, but very few are interested in everything.

So, its important to keep track of people.  You need to know:

  • Have they expressed an interest in a particular product or subject?
  • What pages have they visited on your web site?
  • How often do they open your emails?
  •  Are they a customer?  What did they buy?

Most of us are annoyed when we get an email from a company, even if it’s a company that we like and that we do business with, if it looks like something they send to everyone.

We appreciate information that has been customized and personalized for us.  And we appreciate not having to correct and address or unsubscribe from a list more  than once.

Different Customer Relationship Systems or CRMs do a better or worse job of keeping track of people.

Here are a few of our favorites, with screenshots of the sales pipeline and how it’s managed:

  • Infusionsoft – very powerful and helpful but not very easy to learn or use.
  • MailChimp (and Constant Contact) do a good job of keeping track of opens, clicks and unsubscribes, but don’t take note of mail or phone interactions.  You can connect either of these to a manual process or a “real” CRM such as Pipedrive, but each interaction between different types of software increases the number of possible problems.  Altogether, a good option on a shoestring.
  • Salesforce – the most detailed possible CRM.  And also the most expensive!

    

Deliver Marketing Materials

B2B Email Marketing.017A great system will deliver customized materials based on customer behavior.

This is often handled with an automated campaign or workflow that takes customer behavior into account.  Things like

  • Did they open an email?
  • Did they visit a specific web page?
  • Have they purchased a specific product?

They deliver tailored information based on their past behavior.

This has several benefits:

  • Personalized content make you look thoughtful rather than pushy.
  • You’re more likely to make more sales!

Help You Make Good Decisions

There is a TON of information and data at our fingertips.  We have

  • Website analytics
  • Social media insights
  • Email system statistics
  • Website visitor intelligence

Which is great, but having TOO MUCH information that isn’t coordinated and presented appropriately makes it just about impossible to use.

We like tools that help us easily see several things:

  • What is our projected sales for this month, quarter and year based on current pipeline activity?
  • Our cost per lead?
  • Cost per customer acquired?
  • Return on investment for each marketing activity or campaign?

To Sum Up:

The tools exist these days to do many things well:

  • Keeping track of people
  • Deliver marketing materials
  • Help you make good decisions

What’s Next?

For more information about marketing automation options available and how to use them, schedule a consultation with us! 

 

 

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