For BtoB companies, MA tools have many advantages over using a sophisticated e-mail newsletter stand. And since the high-performance e-mail newsletter stand starts at tens of thousands per month, it may be cheaper to install the MA tool in terms of cost.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is an interest in your products and services by building relationships with leads other than “buy products and services now” among the lead information (business card information and inquiry information) acquired online or offline. It is a series of marketing activities that lead to business negotiations through measures to increase the number of customers.
What is marketing automation, according to the definition of HubSpot, a major American marketing company? It is written as follows.
However, in the case of Japanese manufacturers and manufacturing industries, the expression automation of marketing activities may be misleading. Marketing activities are active overseas in the first place. The marketing department has a lot of work, and marketing automation has been born to save labor.
In the case of Japan, there are many companies that are not engaged in marketing activities in the first place, and they are at the stage of starting marketing activities before “automation”. You can’t automate what you’re not doing, so if you think of it as an “automatic marketing tool,” your expectations are overwhelming.
At first, you have to do “manual” trial and error, so if you don’t have excessive expectations for the terms automation, you’ll have a better chance of success.
Then, if there is no merit of automation, isn’t it okay to use a high-performance e-mail newsletter distribution stand? I will answer the question.
What is an e-mail newsletter distribution stand?
Software for delivering emails to leads. From the type that simply delivers mass mail to the high-performance type, you can divide leads into segments, switch the content to be delivered for each segment, and measure who responded to which e-mail newsletter. There are various functions such as sending out multiple e-mail newsletters and testing which one is more effective ( A / B test ), and schedule delivery of multiple e-mail newsletters ( step mail ).
Email newsletters are used for email marketing. And I think email marketing is good for BtoC. (Of course, there will be businesses in BtoB that are suitable for email marketing, such as sales of information products for business owners.)
In the BtoC business, we first get a large number of prospects by having them try sample products at a low price. From there, you can guide the next product (upsell) or combine related products (cross-sell) to make sales from the e-mail newsletter. After that, by sending a guide to the e-mail newsletter, “customers spend money at the store for a long time and contribute to sales”, which is called LTV, uses email marketing to maximize LTV.
In the BtoC business, basically, we do not approach each person, but we do email marketing by considering customers who are similar to some extent as segments and groups with the same needs, even though we say one-to-one marketing. This is because the purchase price per person is cheaper than that of a corporation, so it takes a lot of time and effort to make a one-to-one correspondence. (Conversely, there is often a one-to-one correspondence for high-priced items such as houses and cars). And groups with the same needs respond to the same e-mail newsletter and buy on the spot.
With 30,000 e-mail newsletter readers, if the purchase rate is 1% in one email delivery, 300 people will respond and sales will be made. We will improve the content of the e-mail newsletter while looking at the purchase rate and segments, aiming for a state where “you can make sales just by sending an e-mail.”
The functions required for this are included in the e-mail newsletter distribution stand.
BtoB business does not lead to purchase by email
In the case of BtoB business, it is not common to make a purchase by email. Recently, a subscription-type business model has appeared, and you can make a contract for a small amount, so it is common to make a contract only online. However, “the higher the unit purchase price” and “the more the content needs to be customized for each company”, the hurdles for contracting online alone will increase.
Since sales make proposals and closings, rather than making sales only by email, tools are required to clarify “who, what, and how much interest”.
BtoC and BtoB with different feelings of satisfaction
Consumers have a wide variety of ways to feel satisfied. Kotler, for example, says there are five types of needs. Just thinking about which needs to write an e-mail newsletter will give you an infinite number of ideas. That is the fun and difficulty of BtoC business.
1. 1. Clarified needs
2. 2. True needs
3. 3. Unspecified needs
4. Needs of joy
5. Hidden needs
On the other hand, B2B companies are said to feel value when the products and services they purchase “solve the problem.” BtoB companies have client companies beyond that. In other words, the behavior of “purchasing” of a BtoB company is in the flow of “using it to create different products and services and selling them to other companies”, and like BtoC, “the end consumer is happy to use it.” It is not the end point of “feeling”.
Given that “purchasing” is part of the supply chain process, it makes sense that “problem solving” is valuable.In other words, in a BtoB business, if you want to pursue a business that pursues added value, you cannot do it without “listening to customer issues.”
While BtoC is “e-mail newsletter-> sales”, BtoB needs to go through the process of “email delivery-> visualization / development of lead interests-> business negotiations / hearing-> proposals (problem-solving proposals)”. there is.
Visualizing a lead’s interests requires behavioral tracking of how the lead traveled around the website, which is usually not available on e-mail newsletter stands.
While e-mail newsletters approach customers as a “group”, in BtoB business, it is necessary to conduct individual hearings, so check individual behavior data, etc., and for leads with higher interest, ” It is necessary to set up “problem extraction through hearings and proposal sales”.
Therefore, instead of introducing a high-performance e-mail newsletter stand, it is recommended to introduce an MA tool that can combine website behavior tracking and e-mail delivery.
