Those sales teams that choose to dive into the world of technology to improve their results usually start with a contact management system or Sales CRM, dabble with LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. and perhaps even try some modest email marketing.

The email marketing tends to be limited to something like a quarterly newsletter.  The e-newsletter is a sort of toe in the water.  It can be quite valuable for nurturing customers and prospects in industries where the universe of potential customers is limited and businesses rely on repeat business from the same customers over the years.  However, a newsletter is not likely to generate tangible opportunity for sales people very often.

We just released an ebook called “Grow Sales with Emails, 7 Ways Sales Teams Win with Email Marketing” that provides some simple examples of how to start leveraging email marketing to grow sales, simply and affordably.

What’s worse, those bold enough to jump into the email marketing pool quickly learn that the $20/month email marketing service they signed up for gets very expensive when they start to send a lot of emails.

In the age of freemium, unlimited Internet access and cloud computing, it’s amazing to discover that almost all email marketing systems available today come with limitations that come as a surprise to the buyer and a serious hindrance to use in the real world.

How Many Emails Can You Send?

If a business has 1,000 customers they may want to send an email to them once a month.  Plus, they typically have 250 prospects in their sales pipeline at any given time.  After a few months, they may have built up a list of potential customers that’s easily 1,000 or more contacts and prospects typically get emailed more frequently so, within 3 months the overall email volume desired could be 3,000 to more than 10,000 emails.

And surprise!  This type of volume puts your squarely into the premium category of most email marketing providers’ pricing structures.   A business that starts off with the entry level package from Constant Contact, Swift Page, iContact, or Vertical Response will be face with upgrading to much more expensive packages.

Who Is In Charge of Email Marketing?

Plus, most of these systems are limited to one user.  That means only one person on the staff can take advantage of the service.  Adding access for another user can sometimes double the cost.

So, all of a sudden, if you’re going to make it work, there’s someone on the staff spending hours per week moving in information from the sales team, creating campaigns and managing them.  For a sales driven business, there is still a great challenge in simply keeping the email marketing system lists up to date based on changes in client and prospect status and new leads as the come in.

The cost of the time invested is of course far greater than the email marketing system subscription.

Online Lead Generation Takes It to a New Level

For the growing number of businesses spending money to increase the visibility of their website online and in search engines and capture leads from the website, the challenges and limitations mushroom.

Constant Contact, Swift Page, Vertical Response, iContact and virtually all email marketing providers can capture leads from your website but, additional charges apply.  In addition, most businesses investing in online lead generation quickly learn the value of on-going lead nurturing campaigns.  Some of the vendors mentioned above have “auto-responder” capabilities but, there are additional charges and limitations apply.

Even far more expensive services such as Infusionsoft and Hubspot limit the number of emails in total that can be sent and the number of emails in an auto-responder sequence.

The message here is buyer beware.  Know what your requirements will be 6 months or 2 years down the road and find a system that will meet those needs.

Opting Out of Your Email Marketing Service is NOT Easy

Selecting an email marketing provider is a long term commitment, even though most newbies don’t realize it.  The reason is that it takes time to build up the Opt-In list (Recipients that have given the business permission to send them emails).  Of course, this is extremely important to the business and to the email marketing service.

A business cannot simply discontinue service with one email marketing service, export their contact list, then import it into a new service and hit go.  In most cases, the new email marketing provider will require the entire list to “Opt-In” again.  This is a significant risk in many ways.  It will be an annoyance at best to the recipient.  It may result in a diminished opt-in list and it’s a big, time consuming hassle.

Taken together, the hidden risks in choosing an email marketing solution warrant careful research.  For sales teams, you want tools the sales team can use, not software that requires time and skills you don’t have.

SalesNexus offers unlimited email marketing for a flat monthly fee combined with all the tools sales people need to manage leads, opportunities and customers.  Click here to see it in action.

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3. 4 Steps to Closing More Sales with Online CRM and Email Marketing

The way this website works is by allowing users to visually organize and share online content. As its name implies, Pinterest makes it possible to collect content from across the Internet and “pin” it to a virtual board. If you look at this site’s homepage, you will notice pieces of content with hundreds or even thousands of “repins.” While this concept is similar to using Tumblr for reblogging, the main difference is this form of social curation puts content into structured sets.

Sounds Cool. But Is It Actually Important?

Over the course of six months, Pinterest went from 275,000 monthly visitors to over 11 million. Not only is that a huge jump for the site, but it also reflects a wider trend. As Gil explains in his post, “most users don’t want to take much effort to produce content.” While it’s easy to assume that’s bad news because it means the Internet is being dumbed down, it’s actually great news for people and businesses who are in a position to create interesting content. By harnessing the power of social curation, you can take care of creating content and let other people spread it for you.

How Can Your Business Benefit from Social Content Curation?

Because Pinterest is so heavily driven by images, you may think that it’s not a good fit for marketing your business. However, there are two ways you can overcome what seems like a hurdle. The first is to simply think outside of the box. Although you may be used to only producing blog posts and articles to promote your business, if you allow yourself to think outside of the box, you may discover that there are some great options you simply hadn’t thought of in the past.

The second option is to focus on other social content curation sites that are gaining popularity. Snip.it allows users to collect and organize links to share with others. While there are plenty of images on their homepage, the site is actually driven by the collections of links people share. Because the focus is on full collections, the key to making the most of any promotion you drive through this site is to publish and promote content that’s interesting and serves as a cornerstone resource.

Have you explored any of the social content curation sites?

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1. Getting Real about Social Media
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3. Social Media 101

If you’re worried that there may be a hole in your sales process, the good news is it’s easy to find out. Let’s take a look at the six standard parts of the sales process:

Generate Leads

Every business needs leads. If no one knows about your business or is interested in what you have to offer, you’re not going to make any sales. Fortunately, the Internet has made it easier than ever to attract new leads. From blogging to using social media, there are a lot of ways to connect with potential customers.

Qualify Prospects

As you’ve learned from experience, there’s a big difference between a lead and a customer. You can save yourself a lot of frustration by figuring out as early as possible if someone is truly a good fit for your business.

Convert to Customers

Once you know that a lead really does want exactly what you have to offer, your goal is to convert them into a customer. During this stage of the sales process, you can use SalesNexus to track everything from email conversations to notes you take about a meeting.

Fully Serve Customers

As many businesses have learned during the last few years, the best way to weather challenging times is to have strong relationships with your customers. That’s why sales don’t end with someone becoming a customer. Instead, your business needs to put effort into making customers feel like they’re always a priority.

Customer Referrals

Happy customers are the best way to bring in new business. Once you fully serve your customers, you want to be sure to make it as easy as possible for them to refer you to others.

New Opportunities

By looking at the flow of customers through your sales process, you can figure out ways to tap new markets and opportunities.

Are You Missing Something?

Now that you know exactly what your sales process should contain, it’s easy to determine if you’re missing something. You can analyze your own process by using a spreadsheet. At the top of the sheet, use each of the six process parts as a column heading. Then on the side of the sheet, list each sales or marketing activity you do.

For each activity, make a mark in the column that it falls under. For many of your activities, it will make sense to mark them in more than one of the six columns. Once you finish doing this for each activity, you will have a convenient visual reference for your sales process. You can use this spreadsheet to see which processes receive the most of your resources, as well as if there are any areas where you need to increase your efforts.

Is there a part of your sales process that you want to improve in 2012?

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Since pricing commonly seems just as much like art as it does science, here are several ways to nail down the right point:

Use a Pricing Table

If you’ve looked at the website of a Web 2.0 SaaS application, you have seen a pricing table with multiple options like Standard, Advanced and Business. The reason so many sites feature a pricing table is because they work very well. But if you don’t sell a piece of software, you may think this strategy won’t work for you.

However, that’s actually not the case. Regardless of what you sell, a pricing table can make it possible for you to deliver more compelling quotes. And what’s cool about this option is even if you use multiple pricing structures for different customer segments, you can easily tailor a table for each segment.

Add a Higher Price Point

If you offer a Basic, Plus and Premium version of your product or service, you probably want most customers to pay for the Premium rate. However, even if it offers a great value, many customers may go with the Basic or Plus options because they feel it saves them money.

To counteract this behavior, add a higher price point. By adding an option like Max, it will make the highest option you actually want customers to pay for seem like a better deal. And although you’re not actually worried about customers paying for the absolute highest option, you may find that a small number are actually interested in it.

Take Advantage of Price Anchoring

The more you can give prospective for a purchase, the better. By anchoring the prices you quote, you can drive home the value that prospects will receive as a result of purchasing from you. This tactic can be anything from explaining how much money will be gained from buying to showing how much money someone will waste if they don’t make a purchase.

Eliminate Risk

Even if you successfully price what you’re offering so that it’s in the perfect range for potential customers, there’s a hurdle that can prevent them from buying. Because humans naturally want to minimize risk, the prospects who receive your quote may still hesitate to pull out their credit card and make a purchase.

If you want to get rid of that hurdle, you need to make it clear that buying from you is a risk-free decision. The best way to do this is by offering a great guarantee or refund policy. Although many businesses worry that people will take advantage of this type of offer, the benefits of eliminating risk far outweigh the costs.

What pricing options have worked best for your business?

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However, if you don’t currently use brochures or are thinking about revamping yours for 2012, you’re probably asking yourself “what makes a great brochure?” Since this marketing tool can still be extremely effective, here are five tips for creating brochures that get results:

AIDA

In the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin gives a brutal speech that involves an explanation of AIDA. This acronym stands for Attention, Interest,Decision and Action. It’s a powerful sales tool, and it can work extremely well as the structure of your brochure. Because the goal of the brochure’s cover is to get a recipient to open it, you want to make sure it grabs their attention.

Once a prospect opens your brochure, you should start by piquing their interest. As they start to build an interest in what they’re reading, you can prompt them to begin making a decision. Finally, as they finish the brochure, you want to make them take action instead of simply going along with the rest of their day.

Focus on the Benefits

A lot of companies make the mistake of filling their brochures with long lists of features. While this may be necessary in certain situations (such as selling a product to highly technical prospects), the average buyer is much more interested in what a product can do for them. As a result, you want the sales copy in your brochure to demonstrate how your product or service is going to make the prospect’s life better. From eliminating hassles to improving their business, it’s easy to come up with a lot of benefits once you start thinking about them.

Include a Call to Action

This ties directly into the last A in AIDA. When a prospect finishes reading your brochure, tell them exactly what you want them to do. In many cases, you’re going to want them to pick up the phone and give your company a call. If that’s what you want them to do, make sure you tell them! Since a brochure is worthless if it doesn’t generate action, the next two tips also focus on AIDA’s last A.

Don’t Allow Hesitation

Not only do you want to tell prospects what to do, but you need to give them a compelling reason not to put off taking action. Although including a deadline may seem too simple to work, this is a tried and true method that still gets results.

Eliminate Risk

You want to make sure that by taking action, a prospect feels like they have nothing to lose but everything to gain. If you plan on closing the sale over the phone, make it clear in the brochure that your product or service has a full money-back guarantee.

Are you planning to create or revamp a brochure in 2012?

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Do Testimonials Really Work?

In April, Visual Website Optimizer published a case study involving WikJob. WikiJob decided to do an A/B test with customer testimonials. Originally, they had the following three testimonials at the bottom of their page:

“Good training for the work environment in Europe.”

“Very useful for practice!”

“Almost a carbon copy of the real aptitude test.”

Keep in mind that these testimonials weren’t attributed to specific customers or even labeled as “Testimonials.” And although WikiJob already had the testimonials on their site, they were at the bottom of the page. So, for the A/B test, WikiJob decided to move the three testimonials to a higher position on the page. And that’s all they did. Instead of adding any additional details, they simply gave the testimonials a more prominent position.

While it’s hard to imagine that a tweak so small could have a noticeable impact, the A/B test showed that it improved their conversion rate by 34%! Near the end of the post about this test, the co-founder of WikiJob mentions that “I may try putting some small pictures next to each testimonial to see if this improves things.” As the editor of the post noted, that’s definitely a good idea.

The reason is while WikiJob already saw great results from the inclusion of simple testimonials, other tests have found that it is possible to double conversion rates by simply including one or more human photos on a page.

Ideal for Launching Something New

Whether you’re starting a new business or you have an existing business that is launching a new product or service, one of the hardest parts of getting anything new off the ground is overcoming the hurdle of getting visitors to actually pull out their credit card and pay for it. Although you have something awesome to offer customers, people are still very adverse to risk.

Fortunately, testimonials are a great way to overcome this problem. Because they show new visitors that people have already paid for what you’re selling and are happy with their results, they won’t feel like they’re taking a big risk.

And if you’re wondering how you can get your first couple of customers and subsequent testimonials, don’t be afraid to offer them a special deal that eliminates all risk. Once they’ve tried and then paid for what you’re offering, all you’ll have to do is ask them for a testimonial.

Do you currently use testimonials on your website? If not, do you plan to add them in the near future?

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1. The Importance of Using Testimonials

They Are Effective

Neuroscience Marketing recently published the results of a Facebook ads study. The study itself was conducted by another firm, Neurofocus. It’s important to note that this firm was hired by Facebook “to study how users perceived ads on premium websites.” The reason that the distinction between “premium” and “average” websites is mentioned is because NeuroFocus had done additional work to confirm that “premium” websites captured more of viewers’ attention and were more engaging emotionally than “average” websites.

This study compared a user’s own News Feed page on Facebook, as well as the default home pages of Yahoo! and NYTimes.com. According to the results of the Neurofocus study, “people viewing their own “News Feed” page on Facebook exhibited high levels of activation on all three metrics: attention, emotional engagement, and memory. The Facebook page had statistically higher levels of emotional engagement than either of the other two pages tested.”

They Aren’t Effective

While the Neurofocus study is interesting, the two main issues are it was paid for by Facebook and only compared Facebook to two other sites. Because many marketers are more interested in data driven results, they want to see information such as how the results of spending on Facebook ads compares to spending on Google AdWords.

Fortunately, several people have published the results of their own tests. Back in September of last year, Ajith Edassery of DollarShower ran a small Facebook ads test. The results of his test were after spending $27.51, he ended up with 1.27million impressions, 303 clicks but zero sales.

In June of this year, Forrest Smith ran five Facebook ad campaigns to market his new iPhone app. At the end of his experiment, he had spent $59.54 for 62 clicks. The campaign resulted in him selling 23 copies of his app and generating $48.30 in revenue. The one caveat is he wasn’t 100% sure of how many of the sales were the direct result of the ads (although he had only made 1 sale in the three days prior to first using Facebook ads).

Because there is support for and against the effectiveness of these ads, it’s worth asking:

Have you tried using Facebook ads? What were your results?

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Then Pat Sullivan, a founder of ACT!, launched SalesLogix, a more advanced and expensive solution for larger sales teams that established the Sales Force Automation category.

Of course, Salesforce.com then broke new ground with Cloud based CRM.  And that’s when things really broke loose.  Since then there has been a proliferation of various solutions, Cloud CRMs and very high end client – server solutions too.

But what has all this innovation led to in terms of benefits to your average sales team?

Lauren Carlson, with Software Advice recently posted a great chronicle of the development of SFA (Sales Force Automation) technology that really hits home the value proposition.

Sales managers, business owners and sales people wondering how the investment in CRM, SFA or just contact management will pay off or perhaps just trying to find the right solution in the forest of options would do well to give it a read.

Read Lauren’s article “SFA 15 Years Later: Now Every Rep’s Best Friend” here.

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Know What You Want to Accomplish

Before you can get visitors to take action, you need to know what you want them to do. The initial thought of most business owners is they want visitors to buy their product or sign up for their service. While it makes sense that this is what a business owner would want, there’s one issue you have to keep in mind. Actually completing an online transaction requires a visitor to trust you enough to pull out their credit card and enter it into your website. While huge companies like Amazon and Apple eliminate this obstacle by saving their customers’ payment information, you don’t have that advantage.

As a result of this hurdle, you may find that you ultimately convert more visitors into customers if you don’t initially focus on making a transaction. Instead, you may experience a better conversion rate if you define the action you want visitors to take as simply signing up for your email list or newsletter.

There are two main reasons this may work better. First, it means you’re going to waste less visitors. If a visitor comes to your site and submits no information, you know nothing about them when they leave. But even if all they do is submit their email address, you at least have something to use as the basis of your relationship. The other reason is sending emails allows you to build trust. As long as you don’t take a spammy approach, the leads you email will learn more about your business and become more comfortable with the idea of buying from you.

Limiting Options Isn’t Bad

Many bloggers and website owners mistakenly believe that web design means they should add more flashy elements to their blog or site. This is why you see so many online properties that have dozens of social buttons and sidebars that are crammed full of items from top to bottom.

In reality, good design should make it easy for visitors to get around your website. It should also emphasize the action you want them to take. Once you know what you want them to do while they’re on your site, you can actually improve your conversion rate by getting rid of elements that are just a distraction from this primary focus.

Are you planning to make conversion optimization one of your main focuses in 2012?

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Streamline Your Sidebar

If you have a signup form in your site’s sidebar but aren’t getting as many new list subscribers as you’d like, Derek Halpern from Social Triggers says the best way to solve this problem is by taking a “less is more” approach.

Instead of cluttering your sidebar with everything from link lists to category sections, his recommendation is to remove everything but the essentials. In his case, this means only having a signup form and a popular posts list. By stripping away visual clutter, you can ensure visitors focus on what matters most.

Test Different Designs

After building a targeted email list, many business owners are disappointed that it doesn’t convert as well as they expected. Although it’s easy to assume that your list isn’t actually interested in what you have to offer, the fact that it’s very targeted means this probably isn’t the real cause.

Instead, the issue may be that you’re not properly connecting with them. Whether your call to action isn’t grabbing their attention or there’s a problem with your layout, taking the time to test different designs and elements can significantly increase your conversion rate.

Don’t Miss Out on the Holidays

The holiday season is a prime opportunity to put your email list to work. Because people are actively looking to make purchases during this type of the year, all you have to do is give them a compelling reason to pull out their credit card.

At Practical eCommerce, Hal Licino has put together a list of the top five ways to make this happen. His tips include: target seasonal behaviors, understand past pricing preferences, update shopping & product line wishlists, allow frequency adjustments and offer mobile versions.

Start Promoting Early

Many business owners assume that they shouldn’t talk about a new product or service until it’s 100% ready to be sold. However, Adriana from Pixel 77 makes the point that your email list is the perfect tool for building excitement about new offerings that you have in the pipeline.

What’s great about using your list in this way is not only is it a great promotional avenue, but you can also gain valuable customer feedback.

Avoid the Spam Folder

Although it seems like common sense, Ashley Zeckman of  TopRank brings up the important point that many email marketing efforts are hampered as a result of issues with the spam folder.

To ensure that you don’t inadvertently prevent recipients from seeing your emails, avoid common problems like subject lines with spammy phrases, multiple exclamation marks or using all capital letters.

What other techniques have helped you improve your email marketing efforts?

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