A client writes:
“I notice you recommend both email AND phone follow-up to inbound leads from programs like content syndication. Our inside sales reps are fairly prompt about following up with all leads by phone. Why do I need to set up automated email response as well?”
My response:
Most all of our clients combine email and phone follow-up – i.e. inside sales calls combined with some kind of automated email response. Here are the key reasons:
1. Often inside sales can’t get to all leads quickly enough (for example, after a trade show) and email ensures that every lead is responded to promptly, eliminating the chance that opportunities will go missing due to (even temporary) issues of sales bandwidth.
2. Increasingly, people don’t respond to phone follow-up or even voicemail, so using email in combination with telemarketing results in a higher “engagement rate” vs. if you rely on phone alone.
3. Email follow-up affords clients the opportunity to learn more about (i.e. profile) individual prospects, so that inside sales can better prioritize leads based on response and demographic data (perhaps through an automated lead scoring system.) Our standard best practice is to have the email broadcast immediately upon the lead being imported into the CRM system. The phone call can follow thereafter, or alternatively, with a marketing automation system in place, you can trigger or prompt sales for phone follow-up at a specific interval.