Why Sales Needs Insight Into Marketing's Email Analytics

Since the early 90s, we marketers have held the power of email open and click tracking. We've been using this data to make good decisions, and even build nurturing campaigns for our sales reps.

Since then, similar technology has been built for salespeople. But every time our Signals team gets on the phone with marketers, we hear objections like ...

"I don't want this notification noise distracting our sales team."

"I don't know if our reps will use this without creepily stalking prospects."

"Our sales team isn't tech savvy enough to take advantage of sales technology."

As a marketer myself, I understand how rolling out email tracking to your sales team can feel worrisome. But let's take a step back and view the parallel between the shifting marketing and sales landscapes. 

Sales is undergoing its inbound evolution.

Once upon a time, marketers were spamming purchased lists -- and hey, some probably still do. But since the birth of inbound marketing, we've learned to organically grow our databases and personalize our email marketing with the target customer in mind.

For ultimate sales and marketing alignment, we need to now enable our sales teams to evolve in the same way. That's where email tracking can come in. 

Which email metrics should Sales be tracking?

Your sales team should be focused on tracking the same core metrics we do as marketers, just for different reasons.

1. Email Opens: If a prospect has opened an email once, sure, they may have physically opened up the email. But if a sales rep begins seeing an email opened multiple times, this is a good indication of how interested a prospect is in your business.
2. Email Clicks: If sales reps are sending along links to valuable information in their email outreach, understanding how their prospects are engaging with those links is critical.  

By using a tool like Signals, sales reps can begin tracking these metrics easily. But I'm sure you're not convinced just yet, so let's jump into the specific objections noted above.

Answers to Marketing's Top Objections

"I don't want this notification noise distracting our sales team."

Let's face the facts: Providing your sales teams with real-time alerts when a prospect is opening and clicking their emails will of course result in more noise -- but it's the right kind of noise. 

There are two ways sales prospecting can go:

1. Set arbitrary dates to follow up/check in with a prospect and hope they're willing/interested in chatting when you connect.
2. Contact a prospect when they're engaging with your emails and already thinking about your business.

I'm leaning toward the latter option. So yes, email tracking will add more noise to your sales team's daily routine. But if the end result is a more effective, prospect-focused sales strategy, that's a good change. This helps Sales solve for the customer in the same way Marketing is always seeking to.

"I don't know if our reps will use this without creepily stalking prospects."

A valid concern. Not because the department in question is Sales, but because the topic in question is email tracking. If marketers have evolved their strategies from the 90s "spray and pray" approach to a more personalized, customer-centric solution, why can't Sales learn to do the same?

I actually worked with a sales professional from the Signals team who has mastered a strategy of taking email tracking intelligence and using it to improve his sales process. You can learn the strategy in the SlideShare below, and use this presentation as a way to educate your sales team on how to use email tracking without being creepy. 

"Our sales team isn't tech savvy enough to take advantage of sales technology."

There's an age old stereotype that marketing is all about arts and crafts. But as we can all attest to, marketing has evolved to be a data-influenced effort for impacting the bottom-line business. In order to get to this point, marketers have had to acquire additional skills not traditionally in our skill set. We're learning how to design, code, blog, and the list goes on.

Sales professionals are facing the same shift. The idea of a SaaS sales model wasn't even in existence a decade ago. As we propel forward in the tech world, sales reps will, too. And there's no magical formula that helped us marketers make this stride. A little education with your sales team can go a long way. 

Are you ready to equip your sales team with sales technology? What other objections do you have?