Sales vs. Marketing Email Best Practices
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 6:35 am
Marketing and sales emails are fundamentally different, but when done incorrectly they can both damage your perception of a company.
Whether the messages you receive feel irrelevant or israel girl whatsapp number just appear in your inbox too frequently, it’s all too easy to delete them on sight, unsubscribe or mark them as spam.
But as a marketer or sales rep, you don’t want your emails getting deleted while unread. You sent that message for a reason, so how do you increase the chances of the recipient reading it and taking your desired action?
The first step is understanding what you’re trying to accomplish with your emails.
The Goals of Marketing and Sales Emails
Every successful marketing campaign starts with a goal, and when it comes to marketing and sales emails, the goals are drastically different.
“With marketing, the ultimate goal is to get a conversation started with sales,” says Guido New Breed’s Head of Demand Generation. “There’s a few pieces of information you need to know ahead of time in order to do that.”
In order for a sales rep to have a valuable conversation with a prospect, they need information on who that person is and how they can be helped by your product or service.
“Part one of marketing follow-up is to send people content that is relevant to them so they continue to stay engaged,” Guido says. “But as you do that, you need to continue collecting information on them to identify their persona, learn more about their company and understand their challenges. That way you can send marketing emails that are contextually-relevant and pass along what you’ve learned to the sales team so that they can start a valuable conversation.”
To collect that information, your marketing emails should promote gated content related to the interests a prospect has expressed. When they access that content, they provide you with their information through forms. As your communications progress, the content you send should guide them through the buyer’s journey so as you learn more about the prospect they become more sales-ready.
Once prospects are handed off to the sales team, marketing’s job doesn’t stop, but it does shift to be primarily focused on trust-building.
The overall goal of sales emails is to book a meeting, but that does not mean booking a meeting is the goal of every individual email. Understanding where the prospect is in the decision-making process will help you understand what’s the most appropriate ask for each email.
Every sales email should have a “give” and a “get.” A give is the value you provide in the form of a resource, insights about their company or information about their industry. A get is what you’re asking the recipient to do for you. You can have multiple gives in an email, but you should only have one get.
“When you give them multiple options or ask for multiple things, that’s when people get overwhelmed and choose none,” says Inside Sales Manager Beth Abbott.
If a prospect is not quite ready to book a meeting with you, your get can be the confirmation of information collected during the marketing process. It’s better to build up some rapport first and then ask for a meeting a couple emails in, depending on their engagement.
While sales is conducting their email outreach, a prospect may still be receiving marketing emails — and that’s totally acceptable as long as the teams are aligned on how their messages are working in harmony. As sales is pursuing their goal of booking a meeting, marketing emails can assist them by building trust with case studies and testimonials. However, for the two communication types to be working toward their goal, they need to be coordinated in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the prospect.
Create a killer email marketing campaign with our Email Best Practices Checklist.
Personalizing Your Emails
“One of the things that always jumps out at me as the biggest difference between sales and marketing emails is that marketers have to master one-to-many messaging and sales reps need to master one-to-one, which just inherently comes off as a different tone,” Beth says.
While sending marketing emails from a generic email address used to be the norm, the industry has shifted so now most, if not all, emails should come from a person. This helps humanize your communications and also increases your likelihood of catching direct responses if recipients choose to reply.
“There are different styles, and everyone has different styles that work for them. Some of it will actually be dictated by the person who is sending those emails out and what their personality is like,” Guido says. “There’s some companies where they have big banners and every email is really heavily designed. Then there’s the other end of the spectrum where you have people like Dave Gerhardt or Neil Patel whose emails sound like they’re coming directly from them. It’s short punchy content.
“And then there’s stuff in between, where it’s not necessarily boilerplate, but you have ‘intro paragraph, subheading, bullet points, call-to-action,’” Guido continues. “Each of those approaches can be successful. It really comes down to the team and the skillsets you have and what your audience will be most receptive to.”
Regardless of your style, you should still try to add some level of personalization into your marketing emails. This is typically done through the use of personalization tokens or smart content in your marketing automation platform.
Whether the messages you receive feel irrelevant or israel girl whatsapp number just appear in your inbox too frequently, it’s all too easy to delete them on sight, unsubscribe or mark them as spam.
But as a marketer or sales rep, you don’t want your emails getting deleted while unread. You sent that message for a reason, so how do you increase the chances of the recipient reading it and taking your desired action?
The first step is understanding what you’re trying to accomplish with your emails.
The Goals of Marketing and Sales Emails
Every successful marketing campaign starts with a goal, and when it comes to marketing and sales emails, the goals are drastically different.
“With marketing, the ultimate goal is to get a conversation started with sales,” says Guido New Breed’s Head of Demand Generation. “There’s a few pieces of information you need to know ahead of time in order to do that.”
In order for a sales rep to have a valuable conversation with a prospect, they need information on who that person is and how they can be helped by your product or service.
“Part one of marketing follow-up is to send people content that is relevant to them so they continue to stay engaged,” Guido says. “But as you do that, you need to continue collecting information on them to identify their persona, learn more about their company and understand their challenges. That way you can send marketing emails that are contextually-relevant and pass along what you’ve learned to the sales team so that they can start a valuable conversation.”
To collect that information, your marketing emails should promote gated content related to the interests a prospect has expressed. When they access that content, they provide you with their information through forms. As your communications progress, the content you send should guide them through the buyer’s journey so as you learn more about the prospect they become more sales-ready.
Once prospects are handed off to the sales team, marketing’s job doesn’t stop, but it does shift to be primarily focused on trust-building.
The overall goal of sales emails is to book a meeting, but that does not mean booking a meeting is the goal of every individual email. Understanding where the prospect is in the decision-making process will help you understand what’s the most appropriate ask for each email.
Every sales email should have a “give” and a “get.” A give is the value you provide in the form of a resource, insights about their company or information about their industry. A get is what you’re asking the recipient to do for you. You can have multiple gives in an email, but you should only have one get.
“When you give them multiple options or ask for multiple things, that’s when people get overwhelmed and choose none,” says Inside Sales Manager Beth Abbott.
If a prospect is not quite ready to book a meeting with you, your get can be the confirmation of information collected during the marketing process. It’s better to build up some rapport first and then ask for a meeting a couple emails in, depending on their engagement.
While sales is conducting their email outreach, a prospect may still be receiving marketing emails — and that’s totally acceptable as long as the teams are aligned on how their messages are working in harmony. As sales is pursuing their goal of booking a meeting, marketing emails can assist them by building trust with case studies and testimonials. However, for the two communication types to be working toward their goal, they need to be coordinated in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the prospect.
Create a killer email marketing campaign with our Email Best Practices Checklist.
Personalizing Your Emails
“One of the things that always jumps out at me as the biggest difference between sales and marketing emails is that marketers have to master one-to-many messaging and sales reps need to master one-to-one, which just inherently comes off as a different tone,” Beth says.
While sending marketing emails from a generic email address used to be the norm, the industry has shifted so now most, if not all, emails should come from a person. This helps humanize your communications and also increases your likelihood of catching direct responses if recipients choose to reply.
“There are different styles, and everyone has different styles that work for them. Some of it will actually be dictated by the person who is sending those emails out and what their personality is like,” Guido says. “There’s some companies where they have big banners and every email is really heavily designed. Then there’s the other end of the spectrum where you have people like Dave Gerhardt or Neil Patel whose emails sound like they’re coming directly from them. It’s short punchy content.
“And then there’s stuff in between, where it’s not necessarily boilerplate, but you have ‘intro paragraph, subheading, bullet points, call-to-action,’” Guido continues. “Each of those approaches can be successful. It really comes down to the team and the skillsets you have and what your audience will be most receptive to.”
Regardless of your style, you should still try to add some level of personalization into your marketing emails. This is typically done through the use of personalization tokens or smart content in your marketing automation platform.