Email marketing still works. In fact, it can deliver the highest ROI compared to other digital marketing methods, if it is done right. As Agency Analytics says:
In terms of ROI, email marketing tends to have a significantly higher return than other channels, as it’s estimated that email generates $36 for every $1 spent—an astounding 3600% ROI. On the other hand, social media generates an estimated return of $2.80 for every $1 spent.
Of course, your results may be different. Every company is unique. Every company has its own top management making their own decisions about their products, processes, policies, and people. Every company, even those producing similar products or services, attract their own unique customers.
This is why just imitating what others are doing rarely delivers the desired return.
It’s also the reason why Kristin interviews your current customers before we write a single word of copy for you. We uncover their “Mindset” when they set out to buy, which consists of their desires, concerns, and questions. We find out:
- The specific problem they were trying to solve, and exactly how they describe it
- Their buying process and why they did what they did.
- The options they considered, and what they thought of them
- Why they bought from you, and what they liked or disliked about the buying process
- Their experience with your product or service—what you do right (and should promote) and what you could do to improve
- Trends in their market, and their biggest challenges
If you build buyer personas without this information, you may be able to identify characteristics and behaviors of your buyers, but your messages won’t match up with their Mindset (desires, concerns, and questions) when they set out to buy. Your messages will miss the mark.
Our goal—and our method—is designed to “reverse engineer” your successful sales so we can produce more sales in quantity for you. Yes, we use AI in addition to this method. But AI alone won’t reveal their Mindset.
Everyone is trying to automate their marketing, and finding it difficult. Why?
Reason 1: Your buyer’s journey is unique.
Because your company, products, and services are unique, so is the buying journey of those who buy from you. They even buy differently from you than they would a competitor. Their concerns and questions will be different.
If your goal is to make it easy for them to buy your product or service, supporting them at every step of their journey, you need to:
- Know exactly how and why they bought from you
- Map out their buying process and their Mindset at each stage
- Use the correct tools to “meet them where they are” and help them move smoothly to the next step.
When we are buying something for ourselves, we know how easy it is for us to walk away from a particular product or service during our buying process.
We might:
- Not “see ourselves” when we first come to a company’s website or product listing.
- Get frustrated when we can’t find an answer to one of our questions or when the answers we find aren’t what we were hoping to find.
- Decide we are never going to buy from the company because of something the salesperson said—or refused to say. Questions that go unanswered, especially when they are ignored or dismissed by a salesperson, raise a big, red flag. Once trust is lost, the rest of the conversation is suspect.
As you can see, this is a minefield. One wrong step, and the sale will not happen. Getting this right is difficult.
Reason 2: You’re depending heavily on AI.
Many companies are turning to AI to help build personas and campaigns.
AI is a great stalking tool, but defining buyer characteristics and behaviors doesn’t get you into the head of your customer to find out what they were really thinking while buying your product or service.
Reason 3: You’re in the middle of your automation movie.
Every company is in the middle of its own marketing automation technology movie. Which customer relationship management (CRM) system is being used? There are dozens of popular CRM and marketing automation tools.
- How well—or how inadequately—is the CRM being used? Is customer information stored outside of the system and/or barely used by salespeople?
- Is there someone working for the company who is the expert in the system, or does the company need help in that area?
- Does the CRM system capture the source of your leads?
- Is the CRM system tied to other business systems, such as an ERP or accounting system? This complicates the process.
- How will the current system help support the unique journey that the company’s buyers take?
These types of problems need to be addressed and solved before a solid marketing automation system gives you a satisfactory return.
