Blog
Marketing Automation or Email Marketing Platforms – What’s Best for Associations?
Email marketing is one of the most popular forms of outreach for non-profits and other member-based organizations. And with good reason: studies have shown it yields an estimated 122% ROI. Yet, there is still debate on the best system to deploy emails: email marketing platforms or marketing automation software.
To answer the question, we looked at the pros and cons of each system.
Email Marketing Platforms
Email marketing platforms are systems explicitly designed to curate subscriber lists and send emails. Organizations can create email list segments, design emails, and schedule email deployments with these platforms. Most systems can also track email data like open rates, click-throughs, and bounces.
Constituent Communication: Using Marketing Automation to Connect with Organization Members
As a member-based organization, your goals differ from traditional businesses. While many companies focus on gaining leads and making sales, your priorities are different. For you, it’s all about engaging with and providing value for your current members.
The nuance of bringing value to your members is challenging, especially in an organization where your marketing team is pulling double or triple duty. Your focus is on giving your members the information and connections they can’t get on their own. But, with an overworked team, maintaining consistent, effective member communication can fall to the back burner.
Need Marketing Automation Support? Here’s Why
Marketing automation is more than a “popular” sales and marketing tool; it’s moved to essential. Eight out of ten companies use marketing automation to gain, score, and nurture leads, and for good reason. Marketing automation can improve workflow, boost conversion rate, increase productivity, and bring critical personalization to customer outreach. Yet, not all businesses see these benefits. Why?
Who’s Watching the Sales Tools? What Integration and Management Can Bring to Your Business Development Strategy
Sales tools are not an answer in themselves. Technology is integral to building your business development strategy, but you need to focus on which tools you use and why. Without any oversight or connection, you can fall into common mistakes like:
• Selling to the wrong people (i.e., those without the need or authority to make the purchase)
• Selling features instead of solutions to specific pain points
• Impersonal, one-size-fits-all outreach
Make tool integration and management a part of your business development strategy to avoid these issues. Someone needs to be watching your sales tools.
How COVID Created New Sales Best Practices for B2B
The world has changed a lot since March 2020. While some changes are (relatively) temporary, many have become the new norm for many parts of life. This is true for the new sales best practices for B2B: what worked in 2019 simply doesn’t work anymore. We’ve noticed changes in how we as a sales team operate and want to share three of those new sales best practices with you.
Why Consumer Market Research is Trending for Sales Teams
When looking at successful business operations, there are a few key factors that stand out. One of the first is people: well-trained data administrators, content creators, sales reps, and coaches are critical. In conjunction with a quality team is consumer market research. Why consumer market research? Because it brings the vital data needed for long-term growth.
The greatest development team is nothing without the right data to equip them. Consumer market research brings that data, arming teams with the information they need to build a database, target leads, and continually move their sales pipeline. Hinge Marketing found that companies that use market research saw profitability double and growth increase by 15x compared to those that don’t’ use research. Why is consumer market research so essential?
Sales Enablement vs Sales as a Service: What’s the Difference?
As a sales as a service (SaaS) provider, we often get the question, “Sales enablement vs sales as a service – what’s the difference?” While both have “sales” in the name, the distinction between sales enablement and sales as a service is subtle but important.
While any organization needs sales enablement to increase profits and grow their bottom line, sales as a service brings the people and skills to make sales enablement happen.
Sales Enablement
Sales enablement is precisely what it sounds like: it means to make sales happen. It requires strategy, technology, training, and data analytics, among other elements working together to engage prospects and turn them into customers. Some of the main aspects of sales enablement include:
Creating an Email Marketing Campaign in Six Steps
Email marketing campaigns don’t get the attention they deserve. Though more recent communication tech, like texting and live chats, certainly bring benefits, email remains one of the most effective marketing methods. In fact, some research shows it has a 4,200% ROI – now that’s effective.
But, to gain such high returns on your email marketing campaigns, you need to put thought into how they’re deployed. One size does not fit all, and your team needs to consider how to craft the right messaging, send it at the right time, and keep improving each campaign to reach your goals.
Here are a few steps to get you started:
The Top Sales Best Practices that May Surprise You
A google search for sales and marketing “tips and tricks” can yield thousands of results. Some highlight a specific piece of technology, while others promise an email template that’s “guaranteed” to get results. While some of these tools and strategies can help, often they’re fleeting or don’t work as a standalone solution.
If my years in sales have taught me one thing, it’s that the most effective strategies are often the most straightforward. These are the top sales best practices we use at NuGrowth that keep delivering year after year.
Apple Mail iOS 15 Update: How it Affects Your Email Marketing Campaigns
In late September, Apple announced the release of its iOS 15 update, a seemingly innocuous occurrence. However, this update introduced a new provision allowing Apple mail users to disable email open tracking, called Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). While this is a win for consumer privacy, it poses a challenge for email marketing campaigns across the globe.
Essentially, through MPP, Apple gives its mail users the option to disable all email tracking. Those users include anyone with an Apple mail (.me) address and anyone opening mail through the Apple mail app (i.e., those forwarding Gmail or business email accounts).
With close to one-third of all emails going through Apple’s mail client, this update will affect all email marketers.