Email Marketing by the Numbers: How to Use the World’s Greatest Marketing Tool to Take Any Organization to the Next Level

What is Marketing’s Goal?

By Stewart RogersDirector and architect of ISS system, IOSBlog: http://www.ioutput.com/issblog

According to internationally known marketing guru Brian Norris, “Marketing is the ongoing process of moving people closer to making a decision to purchase, use, follow, refer, upload, download, obey, reject, conform, become complacent to someone else’s products, services or values. Simply, if it doesn’t facilitate a ‘sale’ then it’s not marketing.”

There’s a lot of truth in that statement. To add to that, I believe there are only two types of businesses: those that have a sales force, and those that take orders.

For those that have a sales force, regardless of whether the sales cycle is one hour or one year long, and regardless of the value of the sale, they must be in the business of “consultative” or “solution” selling (probe, prove, and close). In that environment, it is marketing’s goal to create real opportunities for the sales staff where they can follow up buyers. This means that the marketing team needs to qualify every prospect, and email can be a useful tool in that respect. As an aside, if their sales force doesn’t need to engage in “solution selling,” then they should consider sacking the sales force and start order taking instead!

For those that simply take orders, all the work is done in marketing. For these businesses, it’s all about getting the phone to ring or the website to click over, and once again email is a kingpin for twenty-first century ...