One of my clients is on a limited budget and sends email once a month to sell their products and usually chooses to send a group message with multiple products per message. This can work very well if you are selling small ticket items such as books, DVDs or apparel, but in B-B, targeting is everything. How can you customize and stick to a small budget?
The answer is you can’t necessarily. But what you can do is tie your budget to your revenue.
For example, let’s say you sell computer leases and each contract is worth $3000. Your clients are in pharma, design and government. If you are sending one email a month and spending $3000 (just as an example), how many leases do you need to sign to break even? In this example, let’s say 2.
The more focused your message, regardless of whether you are selling via email or postal mail, the greater your response rate. In fact, the more you make your customers or prospects work – and wading through unrelevant product information is work – the more you suppress response. Makes sense, doesn’t it? And you could test it, couldn’t you?
My theory is that inertia keeps many marketing programs stagnant: “It’s kind of working, let’s not rock the boat.”
But what if instead of sending one message featuring an array of products you customized your message and spent $6000 to send out 3 versions tailored to each market? (Again a sample production figure)
I estimate you could achieve a response rate 50-100% higher, and instead of 2 leases in this example the company would garner 3-4 leases. How much is that customer worth over a lifetime? And would it not be easier to renew a lease to a customer who thought you understood their market because you spoke to their needs and they didn’t feel crowded in with a bunch of completely different businesses? What about your upsell abilities, could you more easily add on some peripherals as upsell products?
I’m not saying that budgets will allow you to customize all the time, but that without testing and working out the math, you don’t know what sales you are leaving on the table.