B2B Webinar Best Practices from VMware

As you’re gearing up for a great new year, I wanted to highlight some webinar/event best practices from the marketing team over at VMware. VMware has found that this marketing channel is one of their most successful when it comes to ROI so taking a few pointers and optimizing your own efforts could pay off big time this year. They achieved an ROI of 1324% in 2010 - not too bad! They were kind enough to share these  best practices via a webinar and I’ve summarized the items that I thought you may be interested in.

Evolution of Webinars

Webinars have changed over the years at VMware. Previously, webinars were controlled by product marketing. VMware have now integrated webinars with marketing as a whole and have included them across various campaigns. Marketing has also aligned the topics with sales goals. This tells me that VMware has worked on eliminating silos that exist within its own marketing organization as well as those that exist between marketing and sales.

A few other interesting tidbits – VMware now prerecord all webinars rather than doing them live. This still do a live Q/A though which allows attendees to post questions and have them answered in real time. This cuts down on potential issues that I’m sure many marketers have been plagued by (“Can anyone hear me?”, “Our speaker will be a few minutes late”, “I’m firing my webinar provider today!”) and makes the recorded version instantly available.

VMware has also successfully experimented with virtual events which are now a mainstay in its event roster.

Social Media and Webinars

Here are a few of the best practices that VMware uses: 

• VMware broadcasts upcoming events to the VMware Twitter handle and Facebook page. The number of registrants from Twitter has consistently grown over the years.
• The marketing team sends reminder tweets 24 hours before the event and an hour before the event.
• The post an event reminder on Facebook 2 days before the event.

Some of these are obvious but I like how they stagger their event reminders using different social media platforms. I was also surprised not to see the use of LinkedIn (I'm sure it's used but it wasn't mentioned). Of course, LinkedIn is more contact focused at the moment (while you can follow a company). I would recommend using your own employees to highlight upcoming events to their LinkedIn friends and posting to various LinkedIn groups. I also expect Google+ to be more prominent this year with the launch of branded pages.

Maximizing Email for Webinars

Here are some best practices on using email to promote your webinars and remind registrants:

• VMware sends the first email invite two weeks before the event  and a second (final) email invite a week before the event.
• VMware has found from testing that sending an email invite one week before the event for their Latin America webinars works best.
• The email subject line for webinar invites should be kept short and simple - highlight why the email recipient should attend.
• VMware has restrictions on how many emails it sends per month to a contact so they summarize all events per segment in a monthly email.
• Targeting (the email list) is extremely important – better to have 100 people that are interested in the event then 1000 that aren’t and may unsubscribe. VMware segments based on title, size of company, product interest to name a few of the criteria.

Again, most of this is straightforward but VMware has done a good job of reviewing what has worked best for certain campaigns based on testing and improved its performance over time.

To take this a step further, here is an example of one of their email invites:

There are a few items to point out. The call to action (Register Now) is very apparent and is above the fold so it can be easily and quickly seen by the email recipient. The details of the webinar are also very clear and to the point. The subject line is simple and very straightforward but doesn’t tell us the content of the webinar. VMware has a strong enough following so additional detail may not be needed. I’ve also noticed that the header image is part image and part text. This allows the text to be seen by the email recipient even if images are turned off (which mostly occurs by default these days) and makes it easier for the marketer to reuse an email template and deploy emails (designers aren't needed to create header images for each email). Finally, VMware has included extra events in the emails to reduce the number of event invites they send and also include a link to access all of their recorded webinars (not a bad tip to get more bang for your webinar buck).

Optimizing Your Website for Webinars

VMware recommends the following:

• Promote events on your home page
• Create a dedicated events page that you can refer people to. See the following example.
• Promote events on specific product pages. As an example, VMware highlights an associated webinar in the bottom right on this page.
• Previously recorded webinars provided leads every month. Make recorded webinars available to different teams in your marketing organization so that they reuse this content and generate even more leads.

Aligning Webinar Campaigns with Sales

Besides working with sales on the content for your webinars, here is how you can get sales to help you generate more leads:

• Create emails that sales can use to send to their prospects that highlight webinar details. Again, having a central area for all events on your website makes it easy for everyone across the organization to see which events are coming up.
• Update the sales team via internal newsletters and the sales portal on upcoming webinars/events and explain how they can inform their customers. Also let sales know how their help has generated more leads. Share the success.

Increasing Event Attendance

This is something that all marketers want. Here is what VMware recommends:

• VMware found that having a live Q/A is the number one draw of live events. Ensure that your webinars/virtual events are interactive using Q/A, surveys and other interactive tactics.
• Video webcasts (where you can see the person speaking) have a higher attendance then audio webcasts
• Use an Outlook calendar reminder (.ICS File) in your reminder emails. This ensures that registrants books off time in their calendars and make the webinar information easily accessible. For more details, see this post: Increase Attendence for Webinars and Webcasts

Lead Management

Once leads are generated from your webinar campaigns, the job of the marketer is not over - it's just the beginning. VMware follows these processes: 

• Leads are downloaded within two business days from the event database and provided to the sales database.
• Most leads are then followed up with by a telequalification team and those that are possible opportunities are sent on to sales.
• Follow up emails are sent to attendees and those that registered but didn't attend.

To speed up the process of getting leads to sales, marketers are now linking marketing automation tools to webinar providers seamlessly via the cloud. For an example, check out Eloqua's Appcloud. This eliminates much of the manual upload processes needed for closed loop reporting and follow up communication.

Measure Webinar Success

Marketing can't be just about executing. There should be goals that have been established ahead of time to define what success means to the marketing team and the entire organization. VMware measures the following:

• Marketing sourced vs marketing influenced pipeline. Marketing sourced pipeline is when a new opportunity tied to an individual is created due to the marketing campaign where one didn’t exist previously. Marketing wants to understand which opportunities it helped generate and specifically to this type of marketing channel, which webinars are generating potential revenue for the business.
  
  Marketing influenced pipeline is when an opportunity that is less then 6 months old already exists for the individual that is tied to the current marketing campaign. In this case, marketing wants to understand the campaigns that are influencing the pipeline and hopefully converting prospects to closed deals.
• VMware also track event registrants, attendees, attendee rate etc… The normal metrics you would expect to determine if a webinar campaign was successful.

I hope you found these useful and at least justified your current efforts. Please share any additional best practices that you have that have helped boost your webinar campaigns.

With a new year comes a time of reflection. This past year has been a great one for me personally. I have a new son, Judah, and my oldest is growing up quickly. I am very grateful for all that I have for what is to come. All the best to you and your family this year.

Chad H.

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Measuring the Impact of Lead Nurturing: 3 Methods You Can Use

One of the things that I love most about my role is when I'm able to visit customers and participate in a customer user group. This past week I was down in Atlanta for the Eloqua All About Revenue Success Tour and I led a breakout session on the different ways that companies measure the success of lead nurturing. Why is this so important? If nurturing is improving the number of overall leads that your marketing team is generating then everything is good, right? Wrong! Companies that are investing in marketing automation should be demonstrating to their managers, the sales team and company executives the role that technology, specifically nurturing, has played in helping the company achieve its business objectives. This of course goes well beyond technology and encompasses all of the time and effort put in to put these campaigns together. Here is a summary of three main ways that marketers are measuring the impact of their nurturing campaigns:

1. Email Response. Most marketers who have been using lead nurturing were able to see improved open and click-through rates and lower hard bounces and unsubscribes as compared to regular batch and blast campaigns. Others broke this down even further by examining email response by region as an example. A few looked at which emails within the nurturing campaign had better response. This is definitely important to better understand which messages are resonating and which aren't and the optimal frequency to send these emails.
   
   
2. Compare Against Benchmarks. Another approach that was discussed was to compare certain marketing metrics after nurturing was initiated to the same metrics before the nurturing campaigns begun. Companies can compare email response, conversions, leads, total revenue generated, pipeline growth, average deal size and the velocity of movement through the funnel from one period to another if they have the benchmarks to compare to.
   
   
3. Measuring the True Influence of Nurturing. The more advanced marketing teams are able to understand specifically how many leads and qualified leads (MQLs), pipeline and closed deals were specifically influenced by lead nurturing. To do this, marketers are adding lead nurturing campaign responders to a Campaign object in the CRM. Reports can be generated that exhibit all of the campaigns that contributed to producing an opportunity and eventually a closed deal.
   
   To make this work, marketing needs to create a process that ensures that this campaign association is occurring and needs to create campaign influence reports. Depending on the complexity of your process and the type of technology that you have access to, these types of reports can be challenging to generate. However, if you're able to tell your boss, the CMO and head of sales that 50% of the qualified leads generated in the last 6 months had been through lead nurturing and that lead nurturing influenced 20% of the pipeline in the last quarter, you're able to better argue your case for investing time and resources in additional marketing automation and content creation initiatives. There is no question that lead nurturing takes some up front planning and time. You need to prove that it's worth it and third party reports have clearly demonstrated the success of lead nurturing. Eloqua just produced a simple chart showing that the best in class companies that are doing the most automation have the highest amount of leads produced.

My advice and a theme from the user group last week is to start slowly. Follow the concept of crawl, walk, run and don't mix up the order! In this case, focus on one aspect of lead nurturing and get moving with that. As an example, choose a certain segment to nurture to. This may be a specific vertical, region or job role your focusing on. That way you don't need all of the content at once and you can build out the campaign and still get your other work done. As you get more comfortable and start to demonstrate some results, focus on how you can optimize the process and improve how you measure the impact of your campaigns. 

Let me know if you have any other metrics you use to measure the impact of lead nurturing.

Chad H.

PS - here are two good resources that can help you today:

• Webinar on lead nurturing: Automating the Buyer's Journey http://lnkd.in/vjFt-V. This is a case study that is really a story about the evolution of marketing automation at NetApp. The story is told by Erin Rampey and there are some great tips that you can take away from this presentation
• The Grande Guide To Lead Nurturing: http://www.eloqua.com/grande/Grande_Guide_To_Lead_Nurturing.html. All you ever wanted to know about lead nurturingGuide To Lead Nurturing

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5 Tips to Improve Email Response

Are your recipients not responding to your emails? This is a topic that I’m sure hits home with many of you. You work hard on getting an email campaign together, you send it out and then you find that the results were not what you were hoping they would be. I originally responded to a discussion on Focus called What strategies can you recommend for enhancing performance of email marketing campaigns? that covered this topic. The first few answers included suggestions such as good subject lines and ensuring that the emails are relevant to the recipient. I want to expand on this and provide five tips of my own that can help you improve your email response.

• Content: The better and more relevant the content in your emails, the better the response. This may seem obvious but you would be surprised how often this gets overlooked. A recent customer of mine found that video and case studies outperformed white papers. Have you reviewed what content is working and what isn't? This should be done regularly. The type of content should also be tied to the stage of the buyer's journey that the recipient is currently in.
  

• The Message: Does the message in your email provide an educational, thought leadership type approach or is it simply all about your company? Always put yourself in the shoes of the email recipient and think about what would convince them to open and respond to your email. It's the "what's in it for me" factor. Focus on your recipient's pain points and how to solve those and less on the benefits of your product or service. In addition, don't bore the reader with too much content. Keep it short, sweet and to the point. The point of email is to get someone to take the next step - focus on that.
  

• Personalization: I'm not talking about "Dear so and so". Real personalization has the email coming from the Account Manager, Support representative or sales rep that has or will interact with the email recipient. By automating this process and having the email come from a real person, you can increase your email response 4X. There are some tricks here as well as to when to use this type of personalization and it may not be appropriate in some situations. As a standard rule, if a relationship has been established or you’re looking at a way of establishing a relationship, use this approach. This is a feature that you would typically find with a marketing automation tool.
  

• Email Deliverability: This is an area that is difficult to consume as it's not tangible but it can make or break the success of your email campaigns. Ask yourself: Is your email list clean? Having a messy list can lead to spam complaints, hard bouncebacks, "unknowns" (non-responders), and spam traps. All of these factors can reduce your email reputation and prevent your emails from landing in the inboxes of the people that are keen to get your emails. You need to ensure that you know what your Sender Score is, if the emails you send have authentication, if you are receiving spam complaints, and the if you are hitting spam traps. Your email/marketing automation provider should be able to assist here. As a first step, I recommend checking out this guide on Email Deliverability and Privacy.
  

• Test: - I hate this one as everyone always says “test, test. test” but I can't stress how important it is. If you don't believe me, have a look at a few examples over at www.whichtestone.com. You'll see that you never know what will work better unless you test it. Here is a great one that Sonic Foundry did on testing their subject line: Long vs. Short Email Subject Line Test.
  

I hope these short and sweet tips were helpful. I know it;s hard sometimes to look in the rear view mirror and examine the success of your campaigns but you need to do it. Look at a few of your low performing emails with the tips above in mind and think about questions you may have and what you can do to make improvements. Small changes to your emails can generate higher conversions and result in a higher impact further down the sales/marketing funnel. What you decide to do is in your hands.

Chad H
@chadhorenfeldt
PS: If you have examples of your emails, I would be happy to have a look at them.

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So You Think You Know Marketing Automation

If you've recently rolled out marketing automation or are considering it, have a look at this two part series that was orginally published on the "It's All About Revenue" blog:


So You Think You Know Marketing Automation Part I


Have you recently rolled out a marketing automation platform like Eloqua, have you been using one for awhile, or are you considering one in the near future? Welcome to the party! It’s easy to think that once you have the basics configured you can set your platform on autopilot, concentrate on executing campaigns, and see the leads roll in. Of course, there’s this thing called “reality”... Read more


So You Think You Know Marketing Automation Part II


So you think you may know marketing automation, but in part I of this post we only started to outline the many different areas you need to consider. Configuring your marketing automation platform, then letting it collect dust is a risky strategy. There are too many environmental factors affecting your marketing strategy that you need to consider. Marketing automation provides the tools to adapt to changes occurring around you – it’s up to you to step up to the plate or be left behind. Read more

Feel free to ask me questions.

Chad

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How Email Deliverability and Relevancy are Directly Related

It’s not too early to start planning for email campaigns you will be launching next year. To help you with this task, I’m going to share a number of takeaways from a recent MarketingSherpa webinar that I attended titled “Top Tactics to Improve Email Relevancy and Deliverability” and included experts from MarketingSherpa and Return Path. In this post, I’ll provide a summary on some interesting data points and tactics to keep in mind as you plan for your 2011 campaigns.

What is on the Mind of Marketers When it Comes to Email?

Marketers are looking beyond cosmetic teaks to their emails to improve response rates. In the 2010 MarketingSherpa benchmark report, the Sherpa folk found that the most significant challenge for marketers when it comes to email is around relevancy. In fact ninety-five percent of marketers are looking to improve the relevancy of their emails. By relevancy, I mean sending the right message to the right person at the right time. Also high on the list was email deliverability. A good chunk of the marketers surveyed (78%) also viewed getting emails delivered to the inbox as significant. Both of these items are closely related which we’ll get to. First, let’s look at tactics to improve relevancy.

How You Can Improve Your Email Relevancy

From another Sherpa chart in the same benchmark report, the most effective tactic when it comes to sending relevant emails is to send emails automatically based on certain triggers. These are typically transactional emails that are sent when you purchase a product online or register to receive valuable website materials such as a white paper. MarketingSherpa has other data to back this up. They found that transactional emails are opened 36% more than regular emails. In the webinar, an example was used of a retailer that achieved a number of additional sales by including relevant products in the transactional emails that were sent after a purchase. B2B marketers should also use transactional emails to their advantage by including content in them that will help buyers move to the next stage in the buyinng process. This assumes that you have defined the different stages that a buyer proceeds through and the content that matches these stages.

Another very effective tactic is to use the behavior of your subscribers when creating your email lists. An example of behavior based segmentation may include an email campaign that targets your most active subscribers (those that have opened and/or clicked a number of emails in the last three months). A recent success story using this technique that I’m aware of involved a client that sent an email on the day of a webinar to those people who had opened or clicked on two previous email invites but had never registered for the event. The email that was sent on the day of the event received a 60% open rate and 25% click-through rate and greatly increased the number of leads generated by this campaign.

While marketers indicated which tactics they used, they also let Sherpa know that increasing relevancy isn’t easy. Most of the issues stem around having enough information on the subscriber to serve up content that is truly different. Another issue is generating the content itself. To create a relevant email, you need relevant content and you need people to create it (see the following amusing cartoon that captures the hard of this issue: Who is Creating Content for Your Company?). On the first point, Sherpa recommends a “use what you got” approach. Use the data that you have in your database to send relevant information. For example, you can use the create date of a contact to send new subscribers slightly different content to keep them engaged. On the content creation side, there are several approaches you can take. I recommend finding the people in your company that are knowledgeable, passionate and enjoy writing. This task doesn’t have to just fall on marketing’s shoulders.

Relevancy Improves Email Deliverability (or Destroys it)

This concept is very simple. The more relevant the email, the higher the chance it will be opened/clicked, the less chance it will be deemed as spam by the recipient, and the higher your email sender reputation will be. The less spam complaints you get and the higher your sender reputation, the better your email deliverability will be. Therefore relevancy increases your email deliverability.

The opposite is true as well. The less relevant the email, the less chance that people will respond to it, the greater the number of spam complaints, and the lower your email sender reputation will be. Return Path is also finding that some ISPs like Gmail and Hotmail are looking at the engagement of recipients to help determine your email sender reputation. For example, if your emails are being deleted without being opened, there is a chance that your email reputation will suffer. To make things even more difficult, Sherpa is finding that junk folders and spam filters are getting even more aggressive leading to an increase in the number of "soft bounces“ or emails that simply vanish into email purgatory. Return Path reported that in the second half of 2009, up 20% of emails sent never made it to the inbox with 16% of emails in North America disappearing (not bouncing or making it to the inbox). That is definitely scary.

How Can You Improve Your Email Deliverability?

Having a reputable email or marketing automation tool is important in terms of your email deliverability but that alone won’t ensure your emails make it to the inbox. As Return Path says, your vendor can only do so much for you. There is no little robot that is working 24/7 behind the scenes to ensure that your emails magically make it to your recipients (it reminds me of those Ford Sync commercials). That does not mean that there is no monitoring of blacklists or ensuring that the systems are running properly. Your vendor should provide the infrastructure, the tools and the resources to help you get your emails delivered. However, they can’t ensure that your data is clean and that your not hitting spam traps. As mentioned above, many aspects of email deliverability depend on email relevancy which is something that only you can control.
Here are the top email deliverability tips related to relevancy that I took away from the Sherpa webinar:

• The easiest and most effective tactic is to get your own IP address(s) for sending your email. This option should be available from your email provider but may be sold at an additional cost. It is definitely worth it as it allows you to control your own email deliverability destiny and includes additional authentication protocols (SPF and DKIM) that tells your recipients that your email tool has permission to send emails on behalf of your company. You can also regularly check your email reputation which can be done for free via Return Path’s Sender Score website. If you have a low score, it may mean that your emails aren’t relevant and that you have additional issues that need to be addressed.
  
  
• Remove your inactive email addresses. This refers to the people you have in your database that are not responding to your email campaigns. I recommend creating an automated reengagement campaign with special messaging to try and reengage these “do nothings”. However, don’t waste too much time on these guys. The more emails you send to these recipients, the more damage it can do to your email reputation and your overall email deliverability. It would be a shame to have these “do nothings” prevent your active recipients from receiving your emails. As an additional tip, be sure to add links to your social media channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook within your reengagement emails as these email non-responders may prefer to keep in touch on other ways.
  
  
• Get a seed list monitoring tool. Before you send out your emails to your lists, you can see if your emails will make it to the inbox, the junk pile or be blocked all together using tools available from Return Path. Many email and marketing automation vendors include these tools as part of their standard packages. Take advantage of these tools! If your emails are not reaching the inbox, there may be a relevancy issue.
  
  
• Email frequency is not an issue if your sending relevant information. Many marketers are worried that their recipients are receiving too much email. You should be able to run reports to better understand the average amount of emails your database is receiving in a certain period. You can also verify of this is an issue by tracking unsubscribes and spam complaint data. That said, if the email your sending is being triggered by a certain event or activity, the recipient should not have any issue with receiving these additional emails. In another recent benchmark study by Eloqua, it stated that best in class companies weren’t too concerned with email frequency do to the high use of automation and relevant communication. They also had a low unsubscribe rate.
  
  
• Personalizing your email increases relevancy and improves deliverability. There are many ways to add personalization to your email campaigns. This may include field merges and adding dynamic content. I’ve written more about this in the post “Top Automated Marketing Personalization Tactics”. In the short term, these tactics may increase the time needed to execute campaigns as additional planning and training may be required. It’s worth it. The time you’ll save in the long run and the increased response you’ll receive from your campaigns should result in you kicking yourself for not doing it sooner. Make sure your using the right tools that allow you to build in dynamic content. There’s no point manually writing in the signature for an email that you want to send on behalf of your sales team. You have better things to do.

The relevancy of your campaigns and email deliverability are deeply connected. The faster that you incorporate this into your thinking, the more you’ll get out of your database and the better results you’ll receive. I hope that you found this post interesting and let me know if you have any questions or your own stories on how you used relevancy to improve your email campaigns.

Chad H.
@chadhorenfeldt

PS: Here are the slides from the MarketingSherpa presentation if you’re interested:

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5 Corporate B2B Blogs That You Should Copy

The importance of blogs in your B2B marketing mix can't be overlooked. Blogs are too important in keeping customers and future customers informed about your industry, your products and your company, driving people to your website, and generating leads. A recent study by Hubspot found that those companies that use blogs generate 67% more leads than those that don't. However, anyone that can open a web browser can start a blog. In fact there are more than two blogs are created each second with about 1.6 Million postings per day which works out to 18.6 posts per second. Let's just say that along with the great blogs out there, you also have a bunch of crap.

If you're a B2B company that is considering starting up a corporate blog or sprucing up your current blog, I have five examples that should provide you with some guidelines and tips on what your blog should include. I used the following criteria to help create this list:

• Was it easy to find your blog on the corporate website? Blogs should be easily available on your website or within a resources section. Of all the criteria, this was lower on the list as most web visitors will find you via search. However, your blog content changes often and it may be something to consider featuring on you home page.
  
  
• The appearance of the blog. The blog should look professional. It should include a real URL (unlike myself but I'm not a B2B company!), and have an enticing design. At times, blogs are seen as an afterthought and look very unprofessional when you compare it to the corporate website. Some blogs have different fonts for each post while others use large images of the authors. I really don't care to see a massive picture of the author for each post. I would much rather see a relevant picture that coincides with the content so I can better visualize what is attempting to be conveyed. Pictures can add a little fun to your blog and it's this type of personality that can keep a steady flow of followers. Make sure you get rid of the flashing images, the useless widgets and Google Adwords if you want people to take you seriously.
  
  
• Is the content appealing? For the blogs I looked at, I wasn't basing my judgement on whether or not I liked the content. I was rather looking for content that would appeal to the target audience. Therefore, the content should not be solely about your products or services. Here is a quick gut check. Look at your last five blog posts. If the name of your company is in the title in three out of the five posts, then you may have an issue. Blogs shouldn't solely be another PR engine. They should educate your readers on topics outside of your company. That said, updating readers on the culture of your company via the blog is a good idea as it gives people a different view of your company that can't be done via the regular corporate website.
  
  
• Is it engaging? Are the blogs engaging? Do people comment on the posts? Are people tweeting or "liking" (I'm referring to Facebook here) the posts? This provides a good indication if your creating blog posts that are designed for two way conversation. Now, I would expect the odd post to be a little bland depending on the purpose but this can't be an ongoing trend. And oh yeah, comments from your co-workers don't count.

PS - posting regularly is a given for me to even consider looking at the blog. If you're not able to post regularly on your corporate blog, it's time to review your blogging strategy. Based on this criteria here are a few blogs that I think you should check out:

Webtrends: Dear Report Monke

• Webtrends: I really liked this blog. It has personality, informative content, a great design and loyal followers. I liked that it contained educational content as well as including some fun posts such as a regular feature that allows readers to ask "Report Monkey" questions. Webtrends also uses interesting headlines such as "It's All About the Visitor Stupid!"
  
  I liked that it included webstats in the top right hand corner which blends the theme of the company with the blog. By focusing on its readers, Webtrends is able to get some great participation from its audience including one post that had 54 comments and counting.
  
  
• InsideView: InsideView does a great job culling together appealing content. They do this by reusing a lot of content that is already out there. For example, in the post "15 Sales Productivity Posts You Should Read Today" InsideView has pulled together some very useful content that is relevant to its readers. This post also generated five comments and a number of retweets. Here is another tip - when you post about other blogs, they tend to comment on your blog and thank you for it (hint, hint, nudge, nudge).
  
  What I really like about this blog is its simplicity. The design is a simple Wordpress design that InsideView has customized for its purposes but it's clean and functional.
  
  
• CEB Views: The Corporate Executive Board has taken things to the next level by creating an informational portal. The design is very functional as it splits up posts based on different categories as well as different types of channels (video and podcasts). This site also makes it easy to find the popular posts based on page views and comments. While needing to keep the content more on the serious side due to the target audience, CEB does add some fun content pieces such as the "Daily Lift" category. For example one such post was on the The World’s Most Boring Article (let's hope we don't see this blog there!).
  
  
• Rally Software: Rally has been able to generate a loyal following by maintaining a consistent tone and providing useful content that starts a conversation. For example, Rally uses an excellent blogging technique in which they interview an industry expert (Five Reasons Why CIOs Should Consider Agile Development). I also liked that Rally gave its readers a glimpse into the life of Rally workers with posts such as Rally’s week of culture and space “hackathons”. It's these types of posts that can help you feel closer to a company and understand how it ticks.
  
• Ariba: This blog takes a bit of a different spin by not mentioning the company at all in the blog title and calling itself "Supply Excellence Blog". It includes different types of content such as videos and uses enticing headlines such as "Sourcing ‘Sexy’ Categories (Like Coffee)". This keeps the blog interesting for its readers and provides opportunities to weigh in on certain topics.

I hope that you have found these blogs useful. Remember that blogs take a lot of hard work. For example, Ariba has been working on their blog since 2006. Don't expect to have your web traffic triple in a few weeks after you've launched your blog. It takes effort, time and patience to achieve a successful blog. Create a plan and keep working at it and the rewards will pay off.

I would love to hear about any other corporate blogs that target B2B companies that you are aware of. What is it that makes these blogs appealing?

Chad H
@chadhorenfeldt

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Top 10 LinkedIn Tips for Lead Generation

I had the pleasure of guest blogging on the “It’s all About Revenue Blog”. Here is a snippet from that post:

If you haven’t logged into LinkedIn these days, it’s time to get back in there and see some of the cool stuff that is now available. This post will provide tips for sales professionals and marketers to get the most out of LinkedIn so you can stay on top of your customers and prospects and make it easier to be found. That said, anyone who uses LinkedIn should find these tips invaluable.

I don’t need to remind you of the growing popularity of LinkedIn and the reputation it has in helping companies increase their pipeline, but I will anyway as there is some great data out there. A recent survey from OneSource that eMarketer published demonstrated that LinkedIn has become “the most effective social network for prospecting by a wide margin”. In addition, almost 50% of the respondents said they were using LinkedIn more for research and prospecting that a year before. Here is a good visual of what this looks like when compared to Twitter and Facebook:

It’s Time to Get LinkedIn to LinkedIn – Here’s How: See the full post here

Hope you enjoyed it!

Chad H.

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