One of the most successful digital marketing solutions we have implemented is aptly named Genius. When I use it, my sales team thinks I am the genius- but it is in fact the very smart Web 2.0 software that integrates with our salesforce.com contact database. On the surface, Genius is a mass email marketing tool- but when the core functionality is tapped into, it can really help your sales team be more efficient and productive. Here’s a few of my favorite features:
1. The Genius Tracker. Not only does the tracker pop up to tell me an email recipient has just opened my email, or is visiting my web site, but the more important intelligence this gives me is that this prospect is is online and engaged with our solution. If a sales rep can call 40 people in a day, and a blast to 5000 prospects shows me that 40 of those prospects are online and engaged, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who to call. That rep’s going to have a much more productive day calling people who they know are in the office. Less voicemails, less brushoffs, less calls to people who don’t work there anymore.
2. Smartgroups. Unlike other email marketing automation software, Genius maintains a constant connection to my salesforce.com database, refreshing the data to reflect changes in our system. This means I don’t have to maintain a spreadsheet or campaign of my target email recipients. I can use a handy report called a “Smartgroup” which functions similarly to a report in salesforce. If a record is changed and no longer meets the criteria of the Smartgroup, then it won’t be included in the email blast. I can spend less time micro-managing subscribers, and more time sending targeted email campaigns to the right people.
3. Visit Replay. Most email systems can only tell me that an email recipient “clicked through” or maybe which link they clicked on. Genius creates a time-stamped slideshow of the prospect’s visit to your website, whether they viewed one page or twenty. This is where the real intelligence can come into play. Before I call a prospect, I can see they briefly visited our Customers page, our Solutions, and then finally navigated to our Test Drive signup page and hung there for five and a half minutes. I look in our salesforce.com and see that they didn’t actually sign up for the test drive. Now I’m ready to call; and my pitch should reflect their activity. “Good morning Mr. X, thanks for taking some time to open my email. Jobscience has a very satisfied customer base because we stand by our solutions. Our most important asset is our customer. If you’d like to get a feel for the Jobscience experience, maybe I could sign you up for a test drive. Do you have any questions or concerns about that?”
Some slick technology and amateur psychology can go a long way towards making an effective email-based sales campaign!
