The post Integrate Sales and Marketing Data to Drive B2B Email Success appeared first on BrandBlox.

When sales and marketing teams work together and share the data they each have on customers and prospects, they can create email campaigns that move prospects through the pipeline faster, accelerate closing times, increase revenue, and reduce cost per sale.

The problem is that sales and marketing departments have traditionally worked independently, even though they are focused on the same customers and prospects. Improving the alignment between the departments can ensure vital data is available to deliver successful email campaigns and achieve important business results.

Avoid data silos

Marketing teams develop email campaigns to generate sales leads and produce content that can help to nurture prospects through increasingly complex sales cycles that involve many decision makers. Those campaigns are based on information held in a marketing database, generally a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

The CRM system provides access to customer and prospect contact information, purchase history, preferences, and response to previous marketing messages and initiatives. This helps teams plan personalized email campaigns to generate leads, nurture prospects, or revive lapsed customers.

Share goals

However, the sales department may be running separate campaigns, designed to support their field sales activities. They will hold additional information on priority targets and campaign responses. Combining the two sets of data will help increase the quality and level of personalization in email campaigns.

Data integration will ensure there is no overlap or conflict between campaigns run by separate departments. For example, the sales team may be close to finalizing a deal with a major customer. If marketing releases a lead generation email to the same customer, this can create confusion.

Gain insight

The sales team can also benefit from the insight provided by lead nurturing email campaigns. Sharing data on responses to different marketing messages, content or offers gives the sales team a greater understanding of the behavior of customers and prospects. This can help them to fine-tune their direct sales programs.

Sales teams can share the information held in visit reports. Those reports may provide marketing with additional insight into the impact of their email campaigns and alert them to any changes in customer requirements. When sales and marketing teams can share the same data, this helps build sales/marketing alignment and ensures both teams have a consistent view of the customer.

Communicate consistently

Integrating the data held by different departments and using it as the basis for shared email campaigns ensures that customers and prospects receive consistent messages from both sales and marketing.

It also helps to maintain consistent branding across all email campaigns. Good branding ensures that all email communications have the same look and feel. Every communication should be recognizable as a message from the same company. Good branding is also responsive — it looks right on every type of device. So, whether a customer is viewing the message on a laptop, smartphone or paper, the brand image is the same.

Deliver results

Email is a powerful medium when it is based on accurate, up-to-date customer and prospect data, and delivered with consistent messages and branding. A solution like BrandBlox provides a quick and easy way to create branded, responsive emails that both sales and marketing teams can use to drive improved results.

The post Integrate Sales and Marketing Data to Drive B2B Email Success appeared first on BrandBlox — Email Design and Coding for the Brand-Oriented.

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