The Opportunity to Improve Sales Automation

When Google announced stricter spam filters for bulk senders last year, there was a spike of alarm from email marketers. The concern subsidised once marketing technology teams reviewed the guidance and realised that it was merely formalising a set of best practices already followed by any permission-based email marketing program. I wrote about the implications of the changes at the time.

Meanwhile, LDT leaders and sales operations executives are still talking about the impact that tougher spam complaint thresholds could have on their email outreach programs. The differing reactions are not unexpected. Marketers have spent the past decade adjusting their strategies to fit increasingly stringent data protection rules. At the same time, legitimate interest guidelines have been used to spare sales teams the same restrictions.

Sales Automation

Due to the rise of sales automation tools in recent years, sales teams have taken on more responsibility for bottom-of-funnel content creation. Sales acceleration nurtures are typically deployed by sales reps through the likes of Outreach or Salesloft with limited marketing input. The quality of the content being sent has suffered. There are too many repetitive book-a-meeting requests that lack supporting messaging or alternative call-to-actions.

Sales reps are using scattergun outreach tactics that were abandoned by marketing departments a long time ago. Google's new bulk sender restrictions will force a change in behaviour among many sales teams, mirroring the journey that marketing has been forced to follow. Many lead development teams will have to take another look at the content they're sending by email, providing an opportunity for marketers to utilise their content expertise to help drive better conversion rates from sales campaigns.

1:1 Personalisation

Sales teams will no longer be able to create generic email sequences for prospects they can't reach on the phone. Both content and channels will need to be adapted to fit buyer preferences. Personalisation is king, just as it is for marketing. Ironically, this fits the historical modus operandi of sales teams far better than the traditional batch and blast marketing tactics adopted in recent years.

Most sales reps would rather personalise the content they send to their accounts. Indeed, this has been one of the key arguments in the often fraught relationship between marketing and sales. It's just that the rise of Outreach-style sales email sequences has made it far easier for reps to just trigger the latest generic content rather than write their own. After all, Sales reps are often poor copywriters.

Sales Enablement

There is an opportunity for marketers to fill that gap by offering better content and supporting call-to-actions that fit the campaigns being run further up the funnel, particularly if they're part of an account based marketing initiative. Marketers don't need to write the entire email sequence, but they can provide support and guidance for sales enablement teams as part of existing sales alignment efforts.

Ultimately, poor quality or incorrectly timed sales automation campaigns harms both sales and marketing efforts. Customers don't differentiate between sales content and marketing content. That's purely an internal division. Unwanted or overly pushy emails can impact brand perception, damage marketing efforts, and potentially lead to unsubscribes.

Marketing needs to make an active effort to improve the quality of sales content while being mindful of the corporate politics and personal sensitivity involved. Any bottom-of-funnel nurture aims to generate meetings for sales, which results in different messaging compared to higher up the funnel. However, this doesn't necessarily require a hard sell. Acting in an advisory capacity is an essential first step to getting better conversion rates for everyone.