It’s not that I mind being thought of as a magician.

I love the fact that my clients are thrilled to pieces with the email marketing programs I put together for them.

It’s just that I know it’s never going to end well when a client praises the initial effort but then just sits back and waits for “the magic” to happen.

What do I mean? Here’s an example …

For over a year, the client kept telling me how very happy they were with the monthly email newsletter we’d been sending out on their behalf. They were consistently receiving positive feedback from their existing customers, and the reports we’d been providing proved that prospective customers were also being engaged, including specifically what they were most interested in. Website and Facebook Page traffic was likewise increasing, directly traceable to the eNewsletter through embedded links.

So what’s the problem, you ask? Because their salesperson had failed to convert these engaged and interested leads into sales, the client’s revenues suffered and they ended up cutting this very effective initiative from their marketing budget.

Really?

There were absolutely no other marketing efforts that provided (as the eNewsletter did) detailed, verifiable reports about who was reading, responding to, or taking action based upon those other marketing efforts. And despite the detailed reports we had consistently provided indicating all this and more with regard to the eNewsletter, they just didn’t want to recognize the red flag that was waving – the one that said, “Hey – let’s have a look at that salesperson’s process!”

Of course, if a salesperson is diligently following up and finding that the marketing is not producing qualified prospects, the marketing can (and should) be tweaked. But when the follow-up is not being done (or not being done properly), why would you cut the marketing rather than undertake some targeted training and ongoing coaching of the under-performing salesperson?

The result, unfortunately, will be that the under-performing salesperson will now have even fewer qualified prospects to work with – not the best way for either her or her employer to meet their sales objectives.

Just as “No job is complete until the paperwork is done,” no marketing is complete until the follow-up is done!

So … How are you following up your own marketing efforts? Which metrics or analytics do you find most useful, and what do you do with that information to either achieve your sales goals or tweak your marketing efforts?

Please comment here – I’d love to hear about your successes or help you with your challenges!