Marketing is paramount for business success, without it, there would be no sales and hence no company to run. According to a recent Gartner Research Study large companies, with annual revenues exceeding $10 billion U.S. dollars allocate on average 11.6% of their marketing budget to digital advertising, whilst smaller companies, with annual revenues ranging from $500 million to $1 billion U.S. dollars allocate 8.5% to digital marketing. 

Email is considered as one of the most effective marketing channels, with an average return of $42 dollars for every one dollar spent. In this article, we will look at the way one SaaS company, Fastbase Inc., turned the email marketing channel into a vital piston in its automated lead generation and sales management B2B engine.

The importance of email marketing

Email usage is still growing at a rapid rate around the world, in 2019 there were approximately 3.8 billion email accounts. In 2020 roughly 306 billion emails were sent and received every day, with approximately 40% of all emails sent being business related. 

Today, business culture is underpinned by email, as 86% of working professionals name email as their preferred method of business communication. Furthermore, email is also ranked as the 3rd most influential source of information for B2B audiences only behind colleague recommendations and industry specific thought leaders. 

According to the Pardot report, State of Demand Generation, a quarter of B2B Fortune 500 companies already use marketing automation. 59% of B2B marketers perceive email marketing as the most effective revenue generation strategy, with an average return of $42 dollars for every one dollar spent. The performance of B2B emails is significantly higher in terms of email open rates and click-through-rates than B2C email marketing campaigns.

The above statistics show the importance and potential of email marketing in B2B customer acquisition. 

Adding automation

Marketing automation works and yields benefits for businesses. On average marketing automation increases sales productivity by 14.5%, whilst reducing marketing overheads by approximately 12%. Furthermore, nurtured leads, result in sales 47% higher than non-nurtured leads. With email being the preferred means of business communication email marketing automation is a field of vast potential for B2B customer acquisition. 

Benefits of B2B email marketing automation include:
 
1.    Reduction in marketing man-hours and increased efficiency
2.    Alignment of sales and marketing departments 
3.    Identification of marketing materials that actually work and engage prospects
4.    Qualification of a large amount of leads 
5.    An increase in lead conversion into sales
6.    Easy monitoring of marketing ROI

Supercharging email marketing with automation and lead scoring 

In simple terms, marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies, used by marketing departments, designed to market more effectively on multiple channels online and automate repetitive tasks. Marketing automation is data-based. Marketing automation is a method of marketing to individual leads, based on their behavior.
 
Lead scoring is a sales and marketing methodology for ranking leads to determine their sales-readiness. Fastbase’s LeadScoring software assigns score values to marketing material. As prospects access and consume more content, their lead score increases and marketers can qualify them as sales-ready, passing them onto the sales team. 

The lead score depends on the interest visitors show in marketing materials and where they are in the purchase cycle. Lead nurturing refers to a process of sending the right message, at the right time to prospects to move them through the sales funnel. Lead behavior helps businesses to customise content to increase sales conversion rates.

Automating email marketing together with lead scoring prospect interactions in terms of email open rates, click through rates and how they engage with marketing content is undoubtedly a powerful tool for marketers to increase company sales. 

Fastbase

Fastbase is a web data analytics company that offers tools to support business- to-business marketing and sales founded in 2014 by marketing and tech entrepreneur Rasmus Refer. Fastbase is one of the fastest-growing software companies within lead generation and marketing automation in the world, analyzing 6 billion website visitors from over 1 million companies every single month. 

Turning static data into actionable information

The platform turns static data using real-time behavioral insights from prospects into actionable information. The software turns once anonymous website visitors into actual users and generates comprehensive lead reports with detailed contact information, including data such as company profiles, email addresses, telephone numbers, LinkedIn profiles and information about visitor interactions on individual pages viewed. 

Marketing automation is data-based. This means that data about each individual lead is used to target personalized content to the person in question. By marketing according to behavioral patterns, you can send automated and targeted email content to a lead moving them further down the sales funnel.

Premium for 30 days

The platform operates a SaaS business model offering access to their software through a subscription model. Fastbase’s solutions are available as Lite, Premium and Premium+. Premium/Premium+ are available for 30 days as a free trial and then continue with a Premium subscription, with the price determined by the number of profiles/websites a company chooses to monitor. A Lite version is available beyond the free trial period, however with limited features and functionality.

Revolutionizing email marketing automation

Fastbase has been described as the number one software for business analytics, marketing automation and sales management. Fastbase products supercharge email marketing automation and sales management. 

With businesses constantly searching for new customers, Fastbase’s email marketing solutions within LeadScoring are well placed to cater to the B2B market. Furthermore, with the importance of email as a means of business communication lead scoring email marketing automation is a field of vast potential.

About Fastbase

Fastbase Inc. is a USA registered web and database analytics company that offers a growing suite of tools to support B2B marketing and sales. The Fastbase big data bank of company data now consists of 200 million companies and 850 million business contacts from top brands in 130 countries from around the world. Analysing over 90-120 billion website visitors each year from over 1,179,000 companies and top brands, Fastbase provides a listing of companies searching for specific products, services or businesses and gives B2B marketers a much better chance of creating a prospective sale or help determine if marketing efforts are effective.

Contact: sales@fastbase.com