Why Email Marketing Is a More Effective Strategy Than Cold Calling
It’s not just the end of a quarter, or end of a year, but it is also the end of a decade. As we pause to reflect and to take stock as we head into 2020, it is a good time to evaluate our business processes and set ourselves up for success this year and beyond.
Sales has always been an evolving field looking to become more efficient and strategic as time goes on and technology has always been an important driver in that. Dialing's for dollars is an old sales adage that is under scrutiny today as many have proclaimed the death of the cold call.
Understanding Cold Calls and Their Effectiveness
A cold call describes calling a prospect without any prior contact to begin a relationship that will lead to a sale. In simpler times when telephones were the newest invention in technology this was the most logical way to start a sales conversation
In today's modern times, cold calling can be a time-consuming process that typically yields very little results. Statistics can vary depending on where you look, but it’s safe to say that around 90% of all cold calls are an abject failure.
If you think about it, it really makes all the sense in the world. A cold call is essentially an interruption for the prospect. They could be in the middle of anything, and their phone rings, answer it, and boom, they are being solicited. It’s not hard to understand why this is frustrating, inconvenient, and to some degree, rude.
Salespeople are better off using a way less invasive approach that can be automated. For this reason, we have seen a major transition and rise in email marketing as the preferred way to contact new prospects.
“Email marketing allows you to craft your sales message and deliver it to your contacts”
The Rise of Email Marketing
Interested parties then will have the opportunity to fill out the information at their leisure and then reach out to you to talk more. It allows them to be a buyer without feeling like they are being sold to.
One big hesitation is that some businesses worry about their emails not being read. But that’s on you to craft eye catching subject lines that get prospects attention and lead to emails being opened.
When email marketing is done right, it is an extremely valuable tool. According to Oberlo, for every dollar you spend on email marketing, the return on investment is $32. That’s an investment worth making. This ROI has made email marketing a fiber of companies’ customer acquisition strategies. In a report from Emersyn, they found that:
“81% of companies cite email as the main driver for their customer acquisition”
The other reason that email marketing makes a ton of sense is because it doesn’t just create positive returns it also saves a ton of time through email automation.
Email Marketing Automation
Automating your email marketing allows you to send email blasts to your contacts that are still personalized. You have a plethora of software options to partner up with, but using one is essential in this day an age. From a strategic point of view, you don’t want to be spending your time crafting and hundreds of emails. Your time is better spent on crafting content and marketing materials to send to contacts and allow your software to insert the contact name and automatically send out a batch of emails all it once. This frees up a ton of time and will yield similar, if not better, results than cold calling.
Either way, the time you get back makes it a plus. Automating manual tasks is the name of the game when it comes to modern efficiency, and this is how you do it.
Saying that cold calling is better because it is more personal than email marketing is ignoring the numerous ways that you can personalize your email marketing campaign. Prior to email marketing automation tools, yes, this would have also been a time-consuming task. But now, these tools make personalizing super easy.
As stated earlier, inserting the contact's name is one simple way to do this, but it doesn’t end there. These tools allow you to maintain separate lists that you can manage and organize as you see fit. Whether that is done by buyer persona or industry or geographical is fully up to you. You can then personalize the content you send to their targeted needs.
“Email marketing is the new cold calling”
Email marketing has never been easier or more strategic. It provides incredible ROI and frees up your time to focus on other areas that you cannot automate.
