The beauty of sales and marketing is that they thrive with effective new techniques. Now is the time to get creative with your marketing plays! You need to find new ways to capture your prospects’ attention. Switching things up often leads to more qualified leads, which, in turn, results in major increases in conversion rates. And who doesn’t want that? Although there is a huge push for social media marketing, email marketing is still effective.

Some even argue it is more effective because your content is being directly delivered to the prospect, rather then being filtered by a site, as is the case with social media. If you think that email marketing isn’t effective, your problem most likely lies in the content of the emails you’re sending out. But how can you up your game with email marketing?

In a recent podcast on Digital Conversations with Billy Bateman, guest Jackie Lipnicki, mid-market account executive at New Relic, Inc., shared her insights on a new and exciting way to market. She calls it a “Quiz to Call” strategy.

Quiz to Call

The Quiz to Call strategy has proven effective for a variety of companies. Basically, you create a quiz— think BuzzFeed-style quizzes. And instead of sending out massive cold emails, you send out the quiz.

The purpose of the quiz is to qualify. You should include questions that will help you get a feel for what their pain points might be. You should also include fun questions to capture their attention. Here’s an example: If you’re working in demand gen for an IT security company, you could ask, “If you were a security system, which would you be? Other questions could be along the lines of “What are your company’s biggest weaknesses?” This way you can identify their pain points and determine if what you’re selling could alleviate those pains.

People are much more likely to respond to a fun quiz than to a boring old email!

Among other things, these quizzes really help with brand awareness. It gets people to see your company name and logo, which perfectly sets them up for receiving a call from you. When you get the results of someone’s quiz, review them and determine how your product will specifically help that person or company.

Then, follow up with a call. When you introduce yourself over the phone and tell them your company name, they will think, “Oh I just took a quiz from you guys yesterday!” They will be more receptive and open to talking to you over the phone. There really is a much higher chance that they will hear you out because you are focusing on helping to solve their pain points, not just selling to them.

These quizzes are very top-of-the-funnel. You can do longer 25-question assessments that will be more around mid-funnel. However, you choose to do it, keep it casual and fun, but don’t forget to include questions that will aid in the qualification process.

Benefits

The two leading benefits are an increase in leads and greater alignment between sales and marketing teams.

1. Increase in leads: As previously mentioned, these quizzes will get you more leads. Sending out mass emails sometimes does not lead to high response rates. The quiz makes it a lot more interactive and people are more likely to fill it out, thus giving you a lead.
2. Greater alignment of sales and marketing: The tension between sales and marketing may seem never-ending. But it is crucial to align those two teams. Sending out these quizzes will bridge the gap between sales and marketing because a) marketing will be bringing in more qualified leads and b) sales will be able to easily evaluate which leads will be most worth their time based off the responses to the quiz.

Overall, you can see some major benefits of implementing this new way of email marketing. And we want to hear if you try it out! Let us know how it works for you by connecting with us on LinkedIn or chat with us on our website!