Trigger email alerts as part of your sales enablement automation strategy

Digital Marketing

Marketing email software usage has been growing by 30% each year, according to Sharpspring. What does this mean to you? Most likely, it means that you already have email marketing automation tools in place or you are considering using them in the near future.

Marketing email automation is often used as a tool for deploying client communications, such as triggered welcome emails, nurturing email workflows, birthday email messages, and so on. However, email automation tools can also be used to streamline your internal sales process, too. Sales enablement automation can set your team up for success by bridging the gap between sales and marketing.

Setting up automated alerts, reminders, and reports for your sales team takes some of the day-to-day management of client nurturing out of their manual workload by automatically alerting them when it is a prime time to follow up with a lead or even when to recognize a client with an important anniversary approaching.

Keep reading to learn about the three types of automated emails you can use to improve the sales process.

Alerts

Based on your marketing and email software, you may be able to use cookie tracking and other tools for monitoring user actions to trigger internal alert emails. These alert emails would serve as nudges to the sales team when a user takes a desired action, such as:

Returning to visit your website within 30 days
Viewing a certain page on your website, like a “request a consultation” page
Submitting a request or contact form from your website

Include context for the automated alert in your email message to the sales team to make it easier for them to know how to respond appropriately. Here’s an example alert email message:

SUBJECT: [ Alert ] A lead in the sales queue visited your website

This is an automated alert to let you know that your lead, John Smith, visited your website on 8/21/2019. He viewed the following pages:
– companywebsite.com/about
– companywebsite.com/consultation

Consider following up with John within two business days to see if he has specific questions or if he is ready to proceed with the sale.

Reminders

When it comes to following up with a lead or a client, a lot of other priorities and daily tasks may get in the way. To help with nurturing, you could trigger internal workflows to remind members of your sales team, for example, to follow-up if progress stalls with a lead.

Reminders may be triggered for leads in the sales funnel or they can be helpful to encourage your sales team to continue nurturing an existing client relationship. Some ideas include sending reminder emails for:

One year project anniversaries
Lead or client birthdays
Quote follow-ups

Work with your sales team to determine which reminders would streamline their processes and help them do their work. Setting up too many reminders could mean they will get lost in the shuffle, so try to find the right balance.

A sample reminder email message might read:

SUBJECT: [ Reminder ] It has been seven days since you sent a quote to John Smith

This is an automated reminder that you sent a quote to John Smith on 8/21/2019. If appropriate, please follow up to determine the next steps. If you have already followed up on this quote, please disregard this message.

Reports

Automated email alerts for weekly, monthly, or quarterly reports may help keep the sales process on track. Consider what timing makes the most sense for your sales cycle and buyer journey. Keep in mind that a weekly report might be too frequent if it takes your team at least a month to close a sale.

The types of reports you might consider automating may depend on your audience and industry. For example, at TBH Creative, we send our team an automated monthly marketing report which includes:

Campaign leads last month
Users who downloaded an offer but haven’t requested a consultation yet
New contacts by source
Top landing pages for new contact submissions
Subscriber list

Ultimately, it can be really beneficial to use sales enablement automation tools to support your sales process. Take some of the burdens off the team by automating sales reminders and give them more time to do more effective, personalized client nurturing.
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This post was written January 23, 2020.

About the author TBH Creative

TBH Creative is an award-winning marketing company specializing in web design/development, digital strategy, inbound marketing, and reporting. Since 2004, we’ve built multi-dimensional digital marketing campaigns and complex, enterprise-level websites for clients in a wide range of industries.

We believe in communicating clearly, delivering excellence, and beating deadlines. But beyond those ideals, what really drives the heart of our business is your business—helping our clients achieve more with comprehensive digital marketing and web design.

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