Given the different ways clients and prospects might prefer to communicate in today’s busy digital world, sales and marketing professionals can benefit greatly by making efficient, effective use of platforms that include social media, text, email, video and even good old fashioned phone calls, says Education Day speaker Amanda Johns Vaden. On Wednesday at the ASI Show Dallas, the senior partner at Southwestern Consulting delivered strategies for doing just that in a session titled “Enhance Your Customer Communication: Social Media, Text and More.” 

Vaden set the stage by noting that platforms like social media, email marketing and, increasingly, text can play pivotal roles in attracting clients and prospects – and in turn help to spur sales. However, she emphasized that many consumers – more than half under certain conditions -- still want to speak directly with a person through phone calls before making a purchase. And that’s a good thing for distributors, as phone calls have a conversion rate of 30% to 50%, according to Vaden. “Your online presence should drive traffic to you,” she said.

To generate traffic that can lead to sales-closing phone calls and in-person meetings, promo pros should, for starters, take advantage of new digital tools like DialMyCalls or Phonevite, Vaden told attendees. These services empower users to record customized, real-human messages that can be sent to a designated number of recipients. As importantly, the services send audio messages as text and/or email, and allow for messages to be uploaded easily onto social media platforms, letting salespeople quickly gain a variety of touch points with prospects, Vaden said. The return from leveraging the services can be worthwhile. “For every 1,000 messages we send, we get about 30 return calls. Averaging 3% or above is a good return,” said Vaden.

Next, Vaden urged distributors and suppliers to be strategic about their email marketing. She advised sending emails at times when open rates tend to be highest – 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. “If email marketing is part of your strategy, when you do it matters,” said Vaden. She also encouraged industry businesses to use an efficiency-enhancing email marketing services that offer automation, email templates, scheduling, and more that marketers can use to speedily craft email initiatives on-the-go.  

Similarly, Vaden hammered home that text-marketing can be an integral weapon in a company’s marketing arsenal – a point brought to life by stats that show 98% of texts are opened almost immediately and that millennials, the fastest-growing generational segment of the American workforce, send more than 75 texts per day on average. To text-market most efficiently, Vaden recommends using a service like EZ Texting. It allows for personalized, tailored messages to be automated, scheduled and sent to different groups of contacts, she said.

Similarly, Vaden said that ad specialty marketers and sales pros should consider leveraging services like BombBomb or Covideo. Both enable users to easily record and share videos through email, literally getting their faces in front of clients. Also, with Covideo for example, templates make getting the job done easier, and tracking tools make evaluating a program’s success a cinch. And the email videos do work, says Vaden. Consider which you would be more likely to pay attention to: A windy follow-up email in paragraphs of text, or a snappy video with a smiling, happy person? “It’s very simple and innovative,” said Vaden.