Many e-mail marketing software providers have different explanations of campaigns. At Systematic Revenue, we think that a campaign has multiple steps and serves a purpose– sales and marketing.
Many other email marketing software providers will call what we call an e-mail blast or mass email a campaign. Mass e-mails have their purpose as well– for example, a monthly newsletter or one-off communication should be sent as a mass e-mail, because they are only one step.
Campaigns can be designed to have 2 steps or 200. This is of a completely different use than sending a mass e-mail. Campaigns can follow up with new sales leads, nurture and educate prospects and opportunities and keep communication with your current customers. This is an advantage because using an automated system enables you to accomplish this without having to manually start each step.
Here are a few common sales and marketing campaigns:
Sales
Follow-up Campaign:
Because you shouldn’t be e-mailing a list that you don’t know, when trying to add new, cold leads to your list, you should call them first. Then, provided that they don’t buy right away, you should start them on a follow-up campaign, which might look something like this:
Day 1: Initial phone call
You should introduce yourself and what you do. Ask them if they would like to receive more information about your business.
Day 3: Follow- up e-mail:
This e-mail should summarize who you are and what you do. An added bonus would be adding some sort of value add like an article,white paper or infographic that shows how using your service or products can benefit them.
Day 5: Special Offer E-mail
If someone is ready to buy at an early stage, you should entice them with some sort of offer like a discount, free consultation or trial to get them to take the plunge. Send this out in an e-mail with a link to a sign up form.
Day 7: Task to follow up via phone and start on nurturing campaign
You should make a last phone call to follow up with the sales prospect and if they still are not ready to buy, start them on a nurturing campaign
** at any point in the campaign, if the contact decides to buy, you would need to stop the campaign for them**
Nurturing Campaign:
A nurturing campaign should be completely educational. Each e-mail should be short, personal and have a link to a value add piece. The frequency is up to you, but you don’t want to bombard you contact list with content. Monthly or quarterly e-mails are usually frequent enough.
Marketing
Nurturing campaign:
A nurturing campaign both serves sales and marketing purposes and most of your contact list should be on these campaigns.
Monthly Newsletter:
A newsletter can contain updates from your company and news within your industry as well as content like blogs or infographics that you have created. This should be sent monthly or quarterly to all of your customers and any opted-in leads.
Customer Check-In:
Keeping in touch with your customers is necessary for retention. Creating a campaign that is a personal check-in that occurs quarterly will keep you top of mind with your customers. Depending on the industry, you may also include a task to call and check in with them as a replacement for one of the e-mails.