A crucial element in achieving a successful email campaign is the relevance of your emails to whoever receives them. You’ll need to support customers or prospects with content that ties in with where they are in the customer journey at that moment. How do your competitors manage email marketing, in less time yet with higher yields?

For starters, many successful competitors today use email marketing software. This allows their marketers to set up personalised email campaigns, in which a prospect gets the information he needs, at any time in his customer journey, in order to guide him through the funnel.

Email marketing software makes all this possible, and is also extremely efficient, thanks tox far-reaching automation. For example, a prospect first receives an email with which he can download an e-book. Anyone who does so automatically receives a thank you mail. A few days later an email with a link to a related case study follows. Whoever downloads this document is a lead, to be followed up by the sales department.

But HOW exactly do your competitors know when to provide what information? Or which mail to send to which recipient? Simple: their email marketing software is connected to their CRM system! So why does this play in their favour?

Improve ROI with an email marketing software in 5 simple steps

1. Gain quick access to all necessary data

To be successful in email marketing, your competitors need data: information about which people to best approach within a company and through which contact details. They also need to know about all communication with customers or prospects, the products or services they bought, the projects they realise, the web pages they visit, the links they click… In short, everything that reveals their current interest and position in the customer journey, so that they can always be approached the right way.

Successful competitors collect all that data in one central, digital CRM database. Smoothly, maybe even completed automatically. Perfectly secured, uniformly managed, without duplicate contact details, and continuously improved by every employee. And also quick to consult in the email marketing software.

2. Distinguish relevant segments

Using the rich data relating to customers or prospects, companies can construct segments that are more detailed and more relevant than ever before, based on what people say, but also on what they DO, or DON’T DO, like the products they buy and don’t buy, and the links they click and don’t click.

For example, anyone who visits a lot of specific product pages on the website, or represents a large part of the turnover, will undoubtedly be approached differently from someone who has never bought a product. This insight is not new, but now the segmentation is based on the actions of customers and prospects. And not merely on words.

3. Personalise with email marketing software

Thanks to this rich, relevant segmentation, your competitors send the right email with the right content when the prospect needs it. This person has the feeling that the company only contacts him. Because of this, he trusts the company more… and therefore is more inclined to become a customer.

To retain the feeling of personalisation, it is crucial that emails address the prospect byname. The signature must belong to the sales manager who follows up similar (potential) customers. Thanks to the integration with the CRM database, this can be realised very easily, without first having to export data from the CRM system.

4. Constantly test and improve emails

Your competitors also constantly evaluate the effect of their communications, via A/B testing. Which email works best: with or without layout, with or without images…? After all, the segments can very easily be subtracted from the data. A/B testing is even possible between individual or small groups of clients and prospects, instead of larger segments.

Also, email marketing software allows you to test quickly and easily. This allows companies to draw conclusions much faster about which emails work best.

5. Enriching data via email marketing campaigns

Finally, using the responses to the email campaign, your competitors get a lot of new data about (potential) customers: from updated contact details to hints about new projects, participation in webinars… all these things can offer insight into leads and how close you are to sealing the deal.

These valuable data automatically end up in their CRM system, stored centrally and followed efficiently.

Teamleader, that’s the CRM system we’re talking about. It allows you to manage your customer and prospect data easily and centrally, to follow up on any communications, to schedule tasks, meetings and calls in a shared calendar … And soon, you will have automated email campaigns, thanks to an integration with Mailify.

Did your marketing efforts produce a lead? Teamleader also incorporates online quotations, optimal project management and an invoicing program. This will allow you to accurately analyse the revenue gained from your leads, through your successful email campaigns.