Blog and News > marketing > No cold calls: Turning leads into customers with an inbound approach
No cold calls: Turning leads into customers with an inbound approach
In business, there is often a strong focus on gathering ever more leads. But leads are no good unless they’re converted into customers.
Maybe it’s time for marketers and sales teams rethink their standard approach to converting prospects to sales. Here are some smart tips for doing just that.
Target your email sends
It’s possible to achieve a 208% higher conversion rate using targeted email over a batch-and-blast approach.
It’s all about putting time into dividing your leads. Try segmenting your groups into appropriate categories so you have a much more funnelled marketing strategy.
Good categories to consider:
- Geographical location
- Age
- Product searched
- Average spend
By categorising in this way, you are able to target relevant information and exclusive offers that are much more likely to catch the customer’s attention and increase their click-through rate. This makes sure you get the right email to the right person.
Make it personal
Model your business on a corner shop.
Get to know your customer; who are they, what do they like, what do they not like? Remember their personal details; ‘How was their holiday last week?’ ‘Congratulations on their new family member’, ‘Did you catch last night’s episode of Game of Thrones?’
In some ways, sales is like a dating game. It is never a one-sided affair, where you talk about yourself and what you have to offer. It is important to understand your customer’s needs and interests and respond accordingly.
By putting the effort in to make things personal for your customer, you can go a long way to build trust. Using the rich profile data supplied by CANDDi, you can see what your customer is looking at, what they have interacted best with, and how many times they have visited. This gears you up to approach them, either by mail, phone, or even using CANDDi Capture, in a much more personal way.
In a real-life situation, if we see that a customer is interested in blog posts about the latest industry news, any content emails that go out to them will include the latest posts about the industry rather than ‘how-to’ guides, or other information that might not resonate with them.
Ditch the sales pitch and introduce yourself
At CANDDi, we are a team of individuals who have our own interests and methods of doing things. I enjoy listening to Radio 6 Music while writing these blogs, and jotting down thoughts by scrawling all over a notepad. Meanwhile, someone else on the team might listen to viking metal and cover her desk in Post-it notes.
We realise that if the team at CANDDi are so different, this must be the case for our customers, too.
There is nothing more off-putting than a sales approach from a robot. Potential customers can see through sales pitches and generic script. Get rid of the script and respond to the person on the other end of the line. Tailor approaches to each individual and their unique context. Keep conversations relevant and personal.
