Website Content & ExperienceDrive and Scale Personalized SaaS Sales
Scaling personalization involves much more than tags, workflows, merge fields, and segmentations. For it to be truly effective and get you fresh leads and prospects that are ready to buy you SaaS, you need a well thought out strategy.
There are various stages in this process. Let us go step by step.
Identify the context
While each customer’s journey through the sales cycle is the same, the context differs.
The buyer’s behavior may be the same with respect to researching which SaaS to buy, possibly entering a lead nurture funnel, signing up to receive free trial, experiencing onboarding, and ultimately becoming a paid subscriber. However, you must understand why someone is motivated to buy your SaaS.
Gain insights from your prospect on the decision-making process that influences the subscription and the business process it will be part of. Send customized messages but remember to keep the context of the customer’s experience in mind.
Shaping the experience of the customer can also help. By tracking the before, during and after stages of research and purchase, you can drive engagement and make customers return to your brand.
This article recommends using marketing automation to engage with prospects as individuals (think personalization) on the basis of their behaviour (tags, segmenting, triggers). You can then direct them to a particular outcome, through automation of funnels, over time, wherever they are.
Once the context is set, a model and strategy needs to be put in place
Prospects are always looking out for a refreshing sales experience.
A successful campaign model is a mix of education, timing and messaging. To make a sale, a sales rep needs to go beyond the usual questions asked. So rather than asking how many emails one must send to garner a response, the focus must be on the content of the email. Rather than sending 10 emails, sales people must focus on making that one email about ten times better.
Sales people generally send two kinds of emails:
- Messages that educate
- Messages that incentivize the user to act
While sales reps can govern the content of the first type, the effectiveness of the second “activation” message depends on the prospect’s business environment.
This article says that there are six main trigger events that lead to action:
- Company is bought.
- Incumbent sales rep resigns
- Capital raise
- Prospect wins large account, increasing available capital
- Competitor launches new product
- Prospect changes his decision maker
To achieve personalization, the sales rep must use these triggers to understand which message he should send, and when to engage the buyer. Also, he must find the right send strategy.
Most sales reps are using the 10/80/10 formula in their mails. It says:
The first 10 percent of the email, which consists of the subject line, should engage the reader and entice him to read further. Sales reps can use technology to push the correct trigger event into the prospect’s inbox, making the message relevant. The next 80 percent should focus on the value proposition of the product and how it can solve the prospect’s problem. In the last 10 percent, give your prospect what he needs: your contact details so you both can connect and take this further. You can also briefly highlight how your solution has helped the prospect’s peers in the market.
Making profit with personalized content
We have all heard that targeted and customized messages drive higher sales. However, no everyone knows how to achieve this. The key is leveraging the combination of customer analytics and marketing automation. Gather user data from website visits, behaviour, and email actions, and marry that with email campaigns and use of social media to make a targeted marketing campaign.
When crafting personalized content, go beyond just adding the name of the prospect. The prospect is more likely to engage with you if the message addresses his specific need. You can track their needs based on their online behaviour using touch points like social media, surveys, CRM, retargeted ads, etc.
Once this data is gathered, segment them according to parameters such as location, job titles or interests, using automation and analytics. You can then target them with personalized and relevant messages such as email drip campaigns, onboarding campaigns and finally, promotions, offers and discounts. The more personalized, targeted and relevant your message, the better chance there is of it not landing in the junk folder of your prospect’s mailbox.
Marketing automation and analytics have made personalized campaigns much easier to carry out. Effectively use this treasure trove of data to learn more about your prospects and their behaviour, and according craft you campaign to drive conversions.
