These days, outbound marketing plays a critical role for results-driven business-to-business e-commerce companies, and for good reason. Thanks to new advancements and automation tools, this strategy delivers by targeting the right leads, providing consistent messaging and enabling e-commerce companies to focus their efforts on closing deals.
Without question, time spent researching companies and targeting prospects gets costly quickly, not to mention labor-intensive. Yet, with the help of new technology applications, outbound marketing can be more cost-effective than ever. For example, Signifyd, which offers fraud-protection services for e-commerce businesses, saved $60,000 in pinpointing qualified leads, boosting its volume of qualified leads, after implementing an automated lead generation platform. Best of all, this automated platform enabled Signifyd staffers to focus on customers rather than on researching prospects.
And when Weebly, a blogging platform, sought to expand from B2C to B2B, it deployed outbound marketing to scale up its outreach, connecting with decision-makers and ultimately gaining traction with its targeted diverse verticals, creating a steady pipeline of clients.
William Wickey
But, like anything else, outbound marketing is most effective when organizations deploy a set of best practices. B2B enterprise commerce companies should implement these seven practices for more successful outbound marketing and lead generation programs:
1. Send the right number of emails. All too often, sales teams give up after three attempts to reach a prospect by email. But, according to industry data, eight emails speeds up the closing process, with 36.2% generating positive responses after the third send. Automating email outreach efforts with scalable technology helps ensure consistent handling of each lead. It’s a cost-effective strategy, whether a company is sending 1,000 personalized emails, or 10,000 emails.
2. Consider the sales cycle when determining email communication cadence. The “right” number and spacing of emails sent depends on the length of a company’s sales cycle. For example, the eight emails might span 50 days for a 90-day sales cycle. Remove prospects from the send pool when they respond, and forward them to a sales development rep or account executive if they demonstrate interest. Or, delete them from future outbound workflows if their response is negative.
3. Consider the timing of email sends. It’s generally best to send outbound emails during normal business hours, but this can be refined with collected data about the prospects, such as when they have free time during the day, and when they are most likely to check their work email.
4. Keep it short and to the point. Accommodate a recipient’s busy schedule by limiting outbound emails to 100 words or less. The content should be easily absorbed at a glance, given that 20% to 50% of the emails will be read on mobile devices. Check phrasing by reading the email aloud before sending, and refine if needed—while maintaining consistent messaging.
5. Include an effective call to action. In most outbound programs, interest is best judged by email replies, so that should be the call to action. Make it simple for the recipient to respond, with a single yes or no question, such as, “Are you interested?” The details can be worked out later. A recipient enters the pipeline with a simple “yes.” For prospects that don’t respond, subsequent emails should include content offering additional value. Recipients are most likely to engage with content that is targeted, relevant, and of high quality.
6. Identify a good open rate. Simply put, a good open rate is one that is better than the previous one. Rather than attempt to match so-called industry benchmarks, set a starting point, and improve from there by better knowing the audience, testing and refining as needed.
7. Seek to reduce email bounce rates. Aggressive spam filters, deterioration of the database and reputation of the sender are just a few of the factors that affect bounce rates. Good sales lead data helps keep the bounce rate below 3%, a manageable level. Outbound email bounce rates typically decline over the course of a campaign, when undeliverable emails are weeded out before each send. Replenishing marketing lists with new emails of varying quality, though, typically result in steady baseline bounce rates.
Of course, outbound marketing is only part of a balanced marketing program. Strong organizations will also implement inbound marketing, content development, search engine optimization, banner ads and more.
By harnessing those tactics, combined with the best practices in outbound marketing, companies can pinpoint where their outreach is working, refine as needed, and see meaningful gains to their bottom line as they close deals.
William Wickey is senior manager, content and media strategy, at LeadGenius, a provider of outbound marketing and sales technology and services.
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