Many managers believe that having their inside sales team send a high volume of generic emails will generate qualified leads and sales. But this strategy is fundamentally flawed for several reasons:
Lack of Personalization - Most "spray and pray" email campaigns send the exact same copy and pasted email to thousands of prospects. This comes across as indifferent, impersonal, and salesy. Prospects can easily identify such generic emails as irrelevant and not tailored to their specific needs. Personalized, relevant communication is far more effective at engaging prospects and turning them into leads.
Low Open and Response Rates - Without personalization, most mass emails have paltry open rates below 10% and response rates under 1%. Recipients quickly identify the sender as just another marketer trying to "sell" them, so they ignore or delete the email unread. Personalized content that demonstrates an understanding of the recipient's business gets far higher open and response rates.
High Unsubscribe Rates - Since generic mass emails provide no value, many recipients will unsubscribe to avoid future clutter. This steadily shrinks your already small pool of engagers and degrades your email list quality over time. Personalized content provides value upfront and gives recipients a reason to remain on the list.
Little Chance of Conversion - Prospects who receive irrelevant and impersonal emails have almost zero intent to convert into customers. They are simply names on a list. Whereas prospects who receive personalized, relevant communication demonstrating an understanding of their needs have a much higher chance of conversion into paying customers. The intent is key for sales.
Waste of Sales Resources
Having sales reps send thousands of generic emails wastes their limited time that could be better spent qualifying leads, engaging targeted prospects, and closing real deals. Spray-and-pray tactics produce few if any qualified leads requiring sales follow-up. Salespeople's time is best spent on higher-value activities.
In summary, management should rethink the strategy of having sales reps spam thousands of generic emails in the hope of generating qualified leads.
This tactic produces poor results in terms of engagement, conversion, and sales.
Instead, sales teams should be guided to focus their prospecting efforts on:
Personalized, relevant communications tailored for specific buyer personas
Initial emails to prospects that demonstrate an understanding of their business needs
A process of identifying and engaging targeted accounts most likely to buy
Front-end lead qualification to filter out prospects with low purchase intent
Higher value uses of sales reps' time focused on converting engaged prospects
When backed by technology and data, inside sales teams can generate far better leads through targeted prospecting - not by blasting out thousands of generic emails.
Management just has to shift from a volume/activity mindset to one focused on maximizing the effectiveness and ROI of their sales representatives' time.
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