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How to Write Engaging B2B Email Sequences

As email marketing has become the most effective way to initiate contact with leads today, thoughtfully coordinated and targeted email sequences can drive curiosity and engagement in prospects — which will prepare them to eventually schedule an appointment with a Sales rep. Understanding your audience when crafting email marketing campaigns is vital to sending out content that will engage leads. As the bridge between Sales and Marketing, Sales Enablement can play a functional role in managing and automating these emails. 

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Email Sequences and the Pandemic

During the pandemic, as the push towards virtual business incentivized Business Development Reps (BDRs) to transition their work online, email marketing became the new strategy for contacting leads before calling them. Though email marketing is certainly a wise choice for this, many BDRs were not adequately trained to write compelling emails to connect with leads, especially given how sudden the urge was to shift to virtual engagement.

Many resorted to sending out overused (and, as a result, ineffective) template emails from their prospecting tools that garnered little attention. The result was a series of unpromising emails that didn’t reflect the full selling potential of the company. Worse, they lacked the compelling content needed in emails to spark interest in leads. 

Centrally approved messaging and email sequencing are now the most effective ways to help BDRs meaningfully connect with leads through email marketing. These strategies save the BDR from having to create their own messaging and content and instead will equip them with a library of targeted messaging crafted by Marketing and Sales Enablement. 

Email Sequencing That Makes an Impact

To craft impactful email marketing campaigns, the customer must come first. Sales Enablement should use an intimate understanding of the target audience (e.g., busy executives) to craft compelling emails that will stand out from the rest. High-level decision makers budget their time and read emails on the go; hence, email content should be highly scannable, focused, and bring unique value to the recipient. 

Each email should also use numbers, easily scanned bullet points, and short-form content (e.g., checklists, infographics) to share meaningful information. Each email should be connected to 6-9 emails that altogether educate and inspire trust in the recipient gradually. 

Prospect engagement content should also be distributed with these email sequences, resulting in a streamlined catalog of messaging for BDRs that supports approved positioning. The end goal for any communication should be to educate the recipient enough on the product to encourage them to call or meet with a Sales rep. 

Sales Enablement’s Role in Email Sequencing

As a liaison between Sales and Marketing, Sales Enablement’s primary role in email sequencing should be to ensure that the right content is created and is targeting the right persona profiles. There should be a robust and continuously updated library of content available to BDRs, and Sales Enablement should ensure that BDRs are comfortable accessing key content to share with leads. 

To build on this training, Sales Enablement should also educate BDRs on the various persona profiles they’ll be contacting in order to help them locate which emails and email sequences they should use when initiating contact. 

On the technological side, Sales Enablement should oversee that these emails are collected into thoughtfully arranged sequences with specific personas in mind, as well as including differentiation between inbound and outbound audiences to deliver specific and on-point messaging. 

Operational support in Sales Enablement will also play a large part in automating the sending of each email a sequence. This will give BDRs more time to focus on what matters most in their role: connecting with leads. 

Recapping

Email sequencing is an important part of email marketing in today’s world. Writing engaging emails and making sure they get sent in the right order and to the right people are both roles that Sales Enablement teams can adopt. To read more about how Sales Enablement can drive sales through email sequencing, click here. 
You can find more resources like this on the SOMAmetrics website under resources. Or click here to schedule a call if you would like to speak with one of our associates.

The Innovative Content That Engages Leads to Talk With Sales Reps

Engaging online content is quickly becoming one of the most important resources available to Business Development Representatives (BDRs) today. As email marketing has become the most efficient way to initiate contact with leads, BDRs are turning to prospect engagement content to get attention and pique interest when sending out emails. In the following sections, we’ll look at why content is so important today, as well as what types of content BDRs need and what roles Sales Enablement can adopt in managing and creating content. 

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Why Content is So Important for Engagement Today  

Because emailing is the rising medium for lead engagement today, one of the most effective ways to pique interest in any communication with a prospective customer is to share compelling, high-quality content.

Email marketing is used to connect with leads before calling them over the phone. During this stage of the buyer’s journey, relevant and helpful information should be shared with leads over email to educate them on the product and inspire a willingness to meet with a Sales rep. The goal is to engage leads enough over email so that when a BDR calls them, they’ll already have the information they need to want to book an appointment to talk with a Sales rep. 

BDRs, then, will need an array of engaging and compelling content to send to leads over email. This content should be specific, highly targeted for specific persona profiles, and come in multiple mediums to reflect the modern trends of today. Additionally, having set email sequencing available to BDRs can streamline and optimize this process. Click here for more information on email sequencing. 

The Types of Content That Best Engage Leads

In a hugely virtual world today, having modern and interesting content is essential to stand out from the crowd. We once lived in an era where PowerPoint seemed fresh and modern, but nowadays, the content that’s most likely to pique a lead’s interest will look a little different. 

Sales Enablement will want to make a wide variety of content available in various mediums, many of which should be easily shareable online. Types of content in this area can include blog posts, white papers, webinars, videos, ebooks, product demo decks, podcasts, infographics, presentations, mobile apps, articles, social media, websites, games, online demos, and tutorials. The key is to have content that’s targeted to the specific industries and personas it will be shared with and to create it with engagement in mind.

These bits of informational content are designed to move curious but unconvinced middle-of-the-funnel prospects to a level of high interest and a willingness to meet with Sales. To read more about the type of content that will engage leads, click here. 

Sales Enablement’s Role in Content Management

With a robust library of content available to them, BDRs will be well-prepared to engage with more leads and with more success. However, it’s just as important that BDRs be well-versed with what content they can and should send and to whom. For Sales Enablement, a vital part of BDR training should cover content awareness. Additionally, sales coaching should highlight which content to use for which persona profiles. 

The content should also be stored in an easily accessed and organized content library, which can be facilitated through the use of content management tools like Google Docs. 

Finally, Sales Enablement teams should track the dispersal of their content and enforce what content needs to be sent out by BDRs to promote better sales. Using KPIs in CRMs like SalesForce can aid Sales Enablement in the collecting of this information. 

Recapping

As email marketing has become more efficient in lead engagement today, the content that BDRs use to pique the interest of their leads should be of vital importance to the Sales Enablement team. Modern engagement content includes persona-targeted items in varied mediums to stand out. To read more about the type of content that will engage leads, click here. 

You can find more resources like this on the SOMAmetrics website under resources. Or click here to schedule a call if you would like to speak with one of our associates.

Email Marketing: How BDRs Connect With Leads Today

The primary role of Business Development Representatives (BDRs) has always been to be ‘tele-prospectors,’ using the phone to find, qualify, and set appointments. Until recently, BDRs have always used cold calling to initiate contact with prospects, but various shifts in buyer behavior have made the phone call a much less effective medium for connecting with leads. Nowadays, BDRs will find the most success by connecting initially through email marketing and nurturing interest in leads before engaging over the phone. 

In the following sections, we’ll discuss why this transition has occurred and how BDRs can use email marketing to connect with leads more meaningfully in the modern selling environment. 

Business Development Representative Email Marketing

Why Cold Calling Isn’t as Effective Today

As you’ve probably noticed, the influx of robocalls over the past couple of years has led most people to stop answering the phone to unknown numbers — and this includes the people BDRs are trying to connect with. A recent study found that 90% of high-level executives report never responding to cold calls. Unfortunately, most people simply filter out sales calls or reject any calls they weren’t expecting, meaning that connecting with leads over the phone is now much harder than it ever was before. 

Another major reason for the switch has to do with broader generational shifts in the workplace. Millennials now make up most of the workforce, and they’re no longer working entry-level positions — reports now show that they have accumulated about 73% of all the decision-making power in business. What this means is that what they want goes, and millennials are known to dislike talking over the phone, favoring more efficient forms of communication. BDRs will need to adapt how they connect with their millennial leads if they’re going to thrive in today’s market. 

Connecting with Leads Through Email Marketing

In response to these changes, BDRs are initiating connections with leads through email marketing first, using engaging content to nurture a relationship before reaching out over the phone. 

This has proven especially effective because the modern buyer is now used to doing most of their product research before meeting with a Sales rep, meaning that guiding them with information during their buyer journey can feed into their natural buying preferences.

Successful email marketing turns otherwise unaware leads into curious prospects, engaging them with content that’ll come to them in thoughtfully prepared sequences. They should be persona-oriented and highly targeted, with the end goal always being to foster a willingness in the lead to speak with a Sales rep. If done right, email marketing can be one of the most powerful ways for BDRs to connect with leads, but unfortunately, many BDRs have struggled to adapt to this new mode of communication. 

With the sudden push to email marketing, especially during the pandemic, many BDRs were not adequately trained to write compelling emails to connect with leads. Many resorted to sending out overused (and, by result, ineffective) template emails from their prospecting tools that garnered little attention. The result was a series of unpromising emails that didn’t reflect the full selling potential of the company. Worse, they lacked the compelling content needed in emails to spark interest in leads. 

Thoughtful, professionally crafted email sequencing is now the most effective way to help BDRs meaningfully connect with leads through email marketing. 

Email Sequencing to Connect with Leads 

Email sequences are internally regulated chains of nurture emails that make sure messaging being sent out is effective and planned out. Thoughtful email sequencing empowers BDRs to make better connections with leads by providing them with approved messaging and related content to send out. It gives them the right templates to send for specific personas and the coordinated messaging that will drive curiosity and engagement to increase appointment setting. Click here for more information on how Sales Enablement can boost BDR success through email sequencing. 

You can find more resources like this on the SOMAmetrics website under resources. Or click here to schedule a call if you would like to speak with one of our associates.

The Role of Content in the Buyer’s Journey

Buyers Aren’t Just Buying Your Product

When buyers purchase solutions for their companies’ problems, they know that they’re not just buying a product — they are also buying the company offering the product. If they don’t feel comfortable with the company, they’re not going to buy the product — it’s as simple as that.

In the past, salespeople could effectively build their company’s reputation with clients through conversations over the phone or at in-person events, like trade shows and conferences. But this is becoming more difficult—buyers are speaking with company representatives much later in the process. On average, today’s B2B buyers are over 70% of the way through the decision-making process before engaging with a sales representative.

This means that the majority of buyers’ perceptions of your company rests on what they can find online. As buyers scroll through the content you’ve posted, they get a sense of your company’s values and what you can provide for them. This is a key step in the buying process, and it is up to you to design the content experience that will draw buyers in and demonstrate your company’s value. 

The Role of Content in the Buyer’s Journey

Successful B2B marketers know they must design their content experience with the buyer’s journey in mind. However, as the following infographic from Gartner demonstrates, the buyer’s journey is not a straight line.  

B2B-buying-journey

As you can see, buyers take many twists and turns before arriving at their final decision. This makes intuitive sense — buyers want to make sure that they’ve thoroughly considered every option before committing to one product. 

As a marketer, your job is to simplify this journey. You want to make it as straightforward as possible for your prospects to find your company, read your content, and meet with your salespeople. This involves creating the buyer’s content experience with sales in mind. 

Strategies for Architecting the Buyer’s Content Experience

As you design your buyer’s content experience, keep in mind that buyers need to be convinced to purchase on both a logical and an intuitive level. Not only do buyers need to hear the rational reasons to purchase your product, but they also need to believe in your company on a deeper level.

This is a lot for your content to accomplish, and it requires a well-thought-out content experience. You should start by aligning your objectives with your buyers’ objectives throughout their journey. After all, you both want the same thing — the right solution to the buyer’s problem.

To start, 71.7% of buyers begin their journey by searching online for solutions. During this phase, you should make it as easy as possible for buyers to access your Demand Generation content, which is content that increases brand awareness and drives buyers to your website. Make sure there are as few barriers to your Demand Gen content as possible so buyers can use that information in the exploratory phases of their journey. 

As buyers begin to narrow down their options, they want more highly specialized content that is relevant to their needs. At this stage, you should provide buyers with Lead Generation content, a type of content that is valuable enough for a prospective client to fill out a contact information form to access it. This high-quality content will establish your company as a thought leader in the industry, and strengthen your reputation with potential buyers.

The Creative Content River™

Now that you’ve architected your buyer’s content experience, it’s time to actually produce the content you need to reach buyers. Instead of doing it all in-house, you can easily fast-track your company’s growth by outsourcing content production through SOMAmetrics’ Creative Content River™.

Generating compelling content in-house is an expensive, fixed-cost endeavor that drains your resources each year. But the Creative Content River™ provides you with all the content you need, for less than half of what it would cost to do in-house. A flexible, scalable subscription to the Creative Content River™ gives you the freedom to focus on the big picture, while still receiving the high-quality content you need to reach today’s buyers through your Demand Gen and Lead Gen campaigns.

For more information about what the Creative Content River™ can do for your marketing efforts, download this white paper. 

The Reality of a Buyer’s Decision-Making Process

The buyer’s decision-making process is less straightforward than you might expect. Fortunately, high-quality decision-enabling content can help streamline the process.

Business Decision-Making: How Rational Is it?

When it comes to making business decisions, individuals like to think of themselves as rational thinkers motivated entirely by logic and reason. In order to make the best possible business decisions, it makes sense that B2B buyers want to rely on proven facts and objective information.

However, the reality of decision-making is much more subjective. Buyers may not want to admit it, but their decisions are motivated at the subconscious level by factors that aren’t always rational.

In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman gives us a framework to understand this process. Kahneman distinguishes between two modes of thinking: System 1, which concerns our fast, knee-jerk reaction to stimuli, and System 2, which is more deliberate and analytical. System 1 refers to the things that come to us effortlessly and without much thought, like the answer to a simple math equation — 2+2, for example. System 2, on the other hand, concerns conscious, effortful thought processes that come into play in more complex situations.

With this knowledge, you might think that System 2 is the primary system at work when individuals are making business decisions. However, the reality is more complicated than that. While rational considerations are undoubtedly important in the decision-making process, System 1 still plays an influential role. 

If you’re only appealing to consumers’ rational considerations, you’re missing a relevant part of the decision-making process. To truly reach buyers, you have to cut through the noise and establish your company as a trustworthy source of information, which is effective on both a subconscious and a rational level. But how do you do this?

Awareness Is Half the Battle

Your prospective clients may not even be aware of the problem they need to address, or they might not be aware of how big that problem is. Some marketers make the mistake of thinking their prospects have a full and accurate understanding of their own businesses — but that’s often not the case.

This represents another complication in the decision-making process. If prospects aren’t aware they have a problem to solve, they won’t actively seek out solutions to that problem. And how do you reach prospects who aren’t searching for solutions?

To address this roadblock, marketers have to create informative content that reaches even the most skeptical of prospects. They need to demonstrate an in-depth understanding of their prospects’ world, from the issues prospects are aware of, to the ones they need help identifying. This is where creative content comes in.

The Creative Content River™: A Stream of Marketing Content
B2B buyers are looking for answers online. Before making any big decisions, buyers will thoroughly research their options — and content is a huge part of that. 75% of buyers report that the content of the vendor they chose made a significant impact on their buying decision.

The types of content B2B buyers rely on most heavily when making decisions are white papers, webinars, and case studies. To successfully generate these long-form types of content, you’ll need full-time writers and graphic designers, each putting in hours of work on a given piece.

But the bare minimum isn’t enough. To stand out amongst the deluge of content online, you have to demonstrate your in-depth understanding of the issues facing your prospects. Successful content must provide useful, relevant, and well-researched information to a given audience, or it will fail to make an impact. And to reach consumers who aren’t necessarily searching for answers, you’ll need to generate a lot of it.

This is expensive and time-consuming, to say the least. But you don’t have to devote all of your time and resources to creating high-quality content in-house — instead, you can outsource your creative content production through a subscription. 

By subscribing to the level of creative content that you need, you can increase your flexibility and expand your content output, without increasing costs. In fact, subscribing will save you 55% to 58% of the cost of full-time employees. With the cost savings, you can devote more of your resources to your company’s core functions and maximize your growth.

For more information on SOMAmetric’s Creative Content River™, download this white paper.

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