MARKETING INNOVATION Archives

New policies signal a major change for brands that have relied on ‘spray-and-pray’ techniques to drive sales.

We all know the pain of misguided sales spam—and lots of it—cluttering our inboxes. Whether it’s emails to our personal addresses that assume our buying habits of a decade ago are the same today, or sales pitches to our work addresses that are completely irrelevant to our roles and responsibilities, we’ve become overwhelmed with poorly targeted emails. Statista found that spam accounted for 45% of the 333 billion emails sent daily in 2022, while research from Gong shows that only 4% of emails are ever even opened.

Why are business leaders still accepting this antiquated and ineffective way of doing things?

This month marks the beginning of new policies from Google and Yahoo to limit the bulk email sends that result in billions of irrelevant and poorly crafted sales pitches emailed daily. This signals a major change for brands that have relied on “spray-and-pray” techniques to drive sales. And for B2B brands, this too should be a wake-up call.

How will these new policies reshape how sales teams think about attracting customers?
Will mass emails become generally unacceptable in our professional inboxes, in addition to our personal ones?
And how will the disruption of a commonly used sales tactic impact bottom lines?

THE HISTORY OF SPAM

The first bulk emails were sent by Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for a computer company, to promote the company’s products to some 400 people. Thuerk said in a 2007 interview that “complaints started coming in almost immediately” after sending the emails, but more importantly, the company “sold $13 million or $14 million worth of DEC machines through that email campaign.” With that, cold emailing as a sales tactic was born.

In the decades that followed, the practice grew, and email marketing tools enabled sales teams to contact an ever-growing list of potential customers, forsaking personalized outreach for a broader pool of recipients.

While more data-driven approaches to sales emails have been introduced over the years, the overwhelming volume of irrelevant sales pitches has led to widespread fatigue. In fact, Gong’s research found that 87% of buyers say that the emails they receive are not relevant to them.

This practice can convert to sales. Even if only 4% of bulk emails are opened, that translates to 40,000 people opening those emails for every million sent by a salesperson. But companies need to ask themselves if irritating and alienating the other 960,000 people is an acceptable sacrifice. And, even more importantly, are they missing out on valuable opportunities by not sending thoughtful, personalized messages to the appropriate buyers out there?

RETHINKING SALES SPAM WITH AI

The technology industry is at a pivotal moment. AI is transforming the ways we work, live, and interact with each other. Now bulk emails can be drafted by generative artificial intelligence far more quickly than by a marketing and sales pro.

The potential impact for teams sending out large email campaigns is significant. Will the rise of gen AI mean that inboxes are flooded even more? Can AI make a difference in how these companies communicate with prospects?

AI can also bring new knowledge and perspective. Using AI to draft emails based on a few lines of context isn’t new, innovative, or effective. But done right, it can actually help companies cut down on the volume, and instead target the right customers with the right message.

We’re seeing new applications of AI that capture and analyse customer interactions to create content and thoughtfully personalize outreach based on a holistic view of the relationship. These applications might be the new approach that could reshape how sales teams develop and assess their outreach programs, from the initial outreach to a prospective customer . . . and over the entire relationship.

The era of relying on volume over strategic precision is over.

AI as a blanket solution won’t solve this problem for businesses. Not all of these tools are created equally, and those without the proper knowledge will only exacerbate the problem. However, there is potential for well-designed AI tools to help teams change their approach.

HOW TO CREATE CHANGE

Google’s and Yahoo’s rules are a positive first step to end spray-and-pray practices, but sales teams will need to do more. The good news is that there’s a path forward that not only doesn’t harm the bottom line but also can improve it.

Business leaders need to stop accepting this practice as the status quo and rebuild these programs from the ground up. Teams have often been measured and evaluated on “activity metrics”—how many emails have been sent, how many phone calls have been made. They should instead be measured by meetings booked and qualified opportunities, giving sales teams the motivation, time, and resources to focus on targeted, relevant outreach.

Similarly, leaders should make sure that their teams haven’t become over reliant on email. Research from McKinsey shows that the number of channels that B2B companies use to interact with other businesses has doubled in the past five years, and includes email, phone, web conference, chat, and social. Leaders should ensure that their teams can meet those potential customers where they want to be met.

The onus is on business leaders to evolve their strategies. While a spray-and-pray approach may have worked in the past, the tides are changing, and to stay competitive, businesses need to take a step back and reimagine how their sales teams operate. And they need to do it soon, before their last emails go unanswered.

Feature Image Credit: 84 Video/Unsplash

BY AMIT BENDOV

Amit Bendov is the CEO and cofounder of Gong.io. More

Sourced from FastCompany

BY ROB WALKER

With alcohol sales flattening, the beer, wine, and spirits industry has managed to cash in on the growing ‘sober curious’ trend.

Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture.

Consumer brands often strive to be part of a larger cultural conversation. But what if that cultural conversation is basically about not using your product?

This is the dilemma faced by beer, wine, and spirits marketers as Dry January—challenging consumers to abstain from alcohol for a month—grows into an increasingly buzzed-about yearly ritual. According to data tracker Nielsen IQ, 29% of consumers say they took part in Dry January last year, and 44% said they were likely to this year. While those numbers likely represent aspiration rather than actual behaviour, the month has become a sort of flagship for a broader “sober curious” trend that has lifted year-round sales of alcohol alternatives well beyond niche territory. But increasingly, some very familiar brands have become part of that conversation too. Brands like, say, Heineken.

Heineken 0.0, that is. Introduced in 2017, it’s now the top-selling non-alcoholic beer in America; its $86 million in sales reportedly account for 7% of all Heineken brand sales. A recent ad for the U.K. market positions no-alcohol Heineken as an acceptable choice at the bar, so you don’t have to bail on drinking buddies while you abstain. (The ad features Welsh soccer star Gareth Bale—get it?) The idea is that avoiding alcohol needn’t be about settling for less, but adding more: “Heineken 0.0 enables you to do more of what you love, like socialize with friends down at the pub,” Stephanie Dexter, brand director at Heineken U.K., told Adweek. Heineken social media has struck a similar theme, noting that Dry January participants need not “compromise on taste” and can shift to its non-alcoholic version instead.

The idea is that Dry January (or the less stringent, “Damp January”) doesn’t have to be a buzzkill, and the sober-curious can blend in at the bar without fear of being stigmatized as an uptight teetotaller. More precisely, the message is that you don’t have to avoid familiar alcohol brands to participate, you can embrace them: Hey, alcohol-avoiders, the beer, wine, and spirits industry has your back.

Heineken is hardly alone in adding its brand to the alcohol-free mix, which includes such long time options as O’Doul’s and newer craft-y offerings as Athletic Brewing Company. In recent years, Guinness 0.0, Samuel Adams Just the Haze, and Budweiser Zero have also become top sellers.

Increasingly, this is a year-round phenomenon, as consumer interest in alcohol alternatives has soared. Alcohol sales have flattened since a pandemic-era spike, while non-alcoholic beer has seen increases of around 30% for several years straight. But Dry January is clearly becoming a monthlong Super Bowl for the category, a marketing scrum, and a time for new launches and silly stunts.

Blue Moon introduced a nonalcoholic Belgian white ale with a promotion that started January 12—the day when the most significant chunk of Dry January participants fall off the wagon. Miller Lite, in a curious twist, is offering alcohol-free “beer mints” that supposedly mimic the brew’s flavour. And White Claw, a brand whose entire raison d’etre is adding alcohol to seltzer, has rolled out a zero-alcohol version. (In other words: seltzer.)

For established brands in particular, building up non-alcoholic variations of alcoholic drinks is a strategy that transcends Dry January, and in fact amounts to a kind of marketing jiujitsu. After all, actively subverting the month event—which began as a public health initiative by a British public health organization back in 2012—would be a bad look. Much better to simply find a way to join the party. According to the Wall Street Journal, Heineken is pouring a quarter of its global Heineken ad budget into Heineken 0.0. And it’s not just targeting abstainers, but also consumers who just want to cut back, perhaps toggling back and forth between versions. Some of its past non-Dry January-specific advertising has even suggested new alcohol-free drinking occasions—like giving a work presentation.

It’s hard to say whether the sobriety trend will have a lasting impact, but it seems like a safe bet that Dry January will be back for another round. And for now, Big Alcohol is buying.

BY ROB WALKER

Rob Walker writes Branded, a weekly column about marketing and branding. He also writes about design, business, and other subjects More